


Lead Us Not Into Temptation

by itallstartedwithdefenestration



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Blood!Kink, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-17
Updated: 2014-02-08
Packaged: 2018-01-09 01:43:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 32,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1139963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itallstartedwithdefenestration/pseuds/itallstartedwithdefenestration
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which there are food rations and afternoons of illegal sex, Sam gambles underground, and a shaky attempt at rebellion is made while staring into a bottle of Corona.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [i-see-light](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=i-see-light).



> For the FYSL Holiday Hellatus 2013 Fanwork Exchange. The prompts used were 'kings' and 'hands'. 
> 
> In this 'verse, Ash and Jo are actually brother and sister, and Victor was adopted into Gordon's family. The story takes place in roughly 2077, if you want a timeframe.

There’s a cut on Lucifer’s lower lip. 

He keeps sucking it in and then releasing while Sam watches, trying to focus on putting his clothes on and failing miserably, remembering the salty metallic taste of it in his mouth from just barely five minutes ago. The skin is broken all around the wound, red and swollen and Sam stares, waiting for the inevitable moment when the cut splits open again and Lucifer bleeds.

Lucifer reaches over and grabs a cigarette off the table by the bed, holding it pinched between his forefinger and thumb so the tobacco won’t fall out. “These are good quality,” he says, first time he’s spoken all evening and Sam swallows, listening to the rough cadence of his voice.

“Black market,” Sam tells him, and Lucifer narrows his eyes, but it’s mostly for show.

“You’re still working there?”

“Where else could I possibly be working, Lucifer,” Sam says, just suppressing an eye roll as he tugs his jeans over his hips and watches them settle into place, barely hanging on. “Anyway, we’ve been fucking—” both of them wince at the harsh sound of the word but Sam carries on regardless—“for the past what, three months now? It’s not like my job’s the worst thing you know about me.”

Lucifer makes a neutral noise low in his throat, and Sam wants to swallow it down. Wants to lick inside Lucifer’s mouth and taste him, blood and all, but they’re already running short on time and Sam resists the urge to just go to the bed and _take_. He sits on the floor instead, tugging his boots closer to him.

“Michael’s not on shift tonight,” Lucifer says after a while, voice careless as he stares out the smeared glass of Sam’s window. His chest rises and falls under the threadbare material of his shirt—it’s Sam’s, really, but Lucifer put it on so now Lucifer owns it—and the cigarette stays together between his fingers. Goddamn miracle.

Sam looks up. He’s been sitting on the floor with his boots on now for fuck knows how long, his thumb sliding in and out of the frayed hole at the edge of his sweatshirt. “Just you?” Tentative, eyebrows drawn together over his nose. He can’t allow himself to hope they’ll be able to gamble again tonight, they only hit the casino three evenings ago, it’s too soon, Sam’s luck doesn’t work like that, no one’s does—

But Lucifer’s nodding in affirmation, “Just me,” and Sam can’t help the smile that spreads across his face. 

Lucifer watches him stand, eyes tracking Sam’s movements towards the door. 

Sam rubs idly at the back of his neck. “Uh,” he starts, watching Lucifer’s mouth mold itself around the cigarette. The cut’s split open again, like Sam predicted it would, and it stains the tip red, color spreading as Lucifer breathes in, exhales; the cloud slate gray over his head.

“Sam,” Lucifer prompts after a while, when Sam hasn’t said anything.

“Just,” Sam says, and then swallows; it’s so hard to remember what boundaries he can and can’t cross around Lucifer. “Don’t forget, you gotta be out of here in twenty.”

Lucifer rolls his eyes. Doesn’t bother hiding it, and Sam bites a small smile against the inside of his cheek. “I know, Sam,” he says, voice slow. “I’ve been doing this for a while, I don’t know if you remembered that.”

“Sarcasm won’t get you to a higher status, Luce.”

Lucifer taps the cigarette against Sam’s mattress, ashes falling to the ground, and sticks up his middle finger, obsolete obscene gesture that could probably have them both killed if Sam actually worried about his room being watched. “Blow me.”

“You wish,” Sam laughs, and ducks out into the stairwell before Lucifer can throw anything at him.

*

At the Market, there’s a pervasive smell of rotting fish in the air, and Sam wrinkles his nose when he approaches his stall and flips his sign back to ‘in service’. “Christ,” he says, crossing himself immediately after, though that’s more out of instinct than belief. “Who left it out?”

His stallmate, Amelia, shrugs. “It’s been like that since oh-one hundred,” she says, and runs her hands over her bolts of cloth. Thin, tattered, useless things—Sam could bind a wound with those, cover his mouth during a storm, but not much else. “Meg said she’ll get around to fixing it when she gets around to it.”

“Of course,” Sam mutters, and shakes his head. He shifts around his knives on the table, sharp shiny razors he’s shoved into wood blocks and rubbed against rock until they were deadly. Watches Amelia out of the corners of his eyes. She’s attractive, long legs and curved neck, and Sam thinks he should want her for a wife. Or at least a mate. Maybe if he was normal he could find that desire buried in himself somewhere, whatever motivation seems to be in every other guy he’s ever known, but it’s not and he can’t and the only person that Sam’s ever slept with to date is Lucifer. Not exactly the most conventional relationship.

Ash approaches the table, grin plastered on his face as he pushes back greasy strands of hair, and he drums his fingers against the column that separates Sam’s stall from Amelia’s. “I’ll take one of these,” he says, pointing at the knives. 

“You just had one last week,” Sam reminds him.

Ash shrugs. “Lost it,” he says, which Sam knows means he ran into Michael and probably had to throw the knife in the ditch or over the border to keep from getting caught with it. 

Sam breathes out slow, reminds himself that not everyone in Faction 24 is as sharp-minded as he and his brother. “Okay, what do you have?”

Ash reaches into the pocket of his jacket, crummy false leather thing that looks about three seconds from falling apart, and pulls out an orange rind. 

“Christ,” Sam mutters, and doesn’t bother crossing himself this time. “You sure that’s it, Harvelle? You not holdin’ out on me, are you?”

Ash makes a ‘you’re kidding, right’ noise, shaking his head. “This is it, man,” he says, and drops the peel on Sam’s table. “Take it or leave it.”

Sam sighs through his teeth. Takes the rind and rubs his thumb against it, scenting his skin orange before dropping it into a bucket by his leg. If nothing else, it’ll provide a few days’ worth of decent air freshener for his hostel room. Lucifer might like it. 

“Okay.” Sam lifts a knife up by the razor, hands it to Ash handle end first. “Watch it, that was just sharpened this morning. You cut anyone, I’m not responsible.”

“I’m not stupid, Winchester, I know.” Ash pockets the knife, still grinning. His eyes drift over to Amelia’s stall, and she holds up a strip of cloth, eyebrows raised. 

He holds his hands up. “Don’t got nothing else to trade,” he says, and Sam glances at Amelia, subtle unspoken exchange. Neither of them are inclined to believe him, but they can’t exactly call him out for refusing to trade more than an orange peel. It’s not like anyone has much more they’re willing to part with these days, anyway.

Ash is turning to go when Sam reaches out and touches his forearm. “We’re on for tonight,” he says, quiet.

Eyebrows lifted, Ash allows a small smile to twitch the corner of his mouth. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Fuck yeah,” Ash says, unthinking, and then glances over at Amelia, who is watching both of them with her mouth slightly open. Cursing, touching someone outside of the immediate family—and someone of the same sex—all taboo, all illegal. The fact that she trades on the Market doesn’t matter, Amelia’s still grown up under the rules of the Center. Sam, and people like him, have to be careful around people like her. 

The casinos aren’t for everyone.

“Okay,” Sam says, swallowing and praying to a god he doesn’t believe in that Amelia will keep her mouth shut. “See you at oh-five hundred.”

“See you,” Ash says, and then he’s gone, whistling softly under his breath.

Amelia’s quiet for a while, watching him go. “I’m going to pretend like that never happened,” she says finally, and Sam breathes out, relieved. 

*

Most of what Sam has, he has illegally.

His hostel room—illegal. Not that the Center wants them all roaming the streets at night, sleeping under bridges and freezing to death in the almost inevitable nightly snow that falls no matter where you are, but. Sam’s pretty sure if the hostels were legal they’d have to trade something to stay in them, and as it is all Sam’s ever had to do is show up at the door of one and flash his identification card, the one with his DNA etched permanently into the strip of coding on the back. They know him, they know his brother. Everyone knew his father. Sam’s never had trouble gaining access to a hostel room in his life. One of the few benefits of being a Winchester, he supposes.

His rations—illegal. They’re all allowed rations, of course, because who wants to clean dead starved bodies out of the gutters, but anyone who has them legally works on a labor farm, or for one of the powerful families that run the Center, and Dean—Sam’s brother Dean, who he sees so rarely anymore he’s half forgotten what he looks like—vowed once, years ago, that Sam would never work like that. Sam has his stall at the Market, he has what little value he’s inherited following John’s death in the military, and he gets by on more than most do a week. 

The fact that Sam’s lethal when it comes to gambling helps, but Sam wouldn’t admit that in public, even under torture.

Almost all of Sam’s possessions are from his job at the Market, which is also illegal—although one of the few things Sam knows of that isn’t punishable by death. He supposes that should be comforting. His clothes, worn in and dirty; his sparse furniture. The glass on his window—Sam’s lucky to have that, he knows the Harvelles have a screen, and some families just have a thin curtain. 

When Sam was younger, he asked Dean why they were always cold and hungry and relocating. Why their father was almost never around, and when he was he usually had some kind of garish cut across his forehead. Dean gave him some vague answer, something to do with a war that happened years before their time, something about the government getting smaller and crueler, but Sam’s almost twenty-five now and even if he knows more about his dad’s work, what he did and who he did it with, he still doesn’t have a full answer for his questions. 

At least he’s mostly settled now. At least he has that.

His relationship with Lucifer is illegal, too. There’s really nothing in it except sex, Sam getting Lucifer off—and Lucifer getting Sam off, though it wasn’t like that in the very beginning—but it gives Sam a chance to get away with things he wouldn’t otherwise. Like gambling. Sneaking extra rations when he loses at the casinos and has to put in fourteen, fifteen hours of real labor so he can eat for the week. Sending obscure letters to his brother in Faction 17, slipping out of the gates for a few hours just to chase down that uneasy restless feeling he gets sometimes. 

He wants so badly, sometimes, to just leave, start a new life somewhere else where it’s better, but he doesn’t know if a place like that exists.

*

By the time Sam’s shift at the Market is done, it’s raining, sheets of cold water pouring out of the overcast sky and Sam drags his hood over his head, feeling nothing less than miserable as he flips the sign and trudges out through the already gathering sludge in the road. 

“See you tomorrow, Sam,” Amelia calls, and Sam waves at her over his shoulder without looking back. 

Ash and his sister Jo are waiting for him at the entrance, hands shoved in their pockets as they watch him approach. They don’t look much alike, except around the eyes, and they’re not as close as Sam is with Dean. Sam can’t picture Ash risking his life to send Jo a note, if she was living off somewhere else. 

“We’re gambling again?” Jo asks, when Sam’s close enough to hear her whisper.

Sam nods.

“This is the second time in under a week, shit,” Jo says, and, “what lucky streak are we coming on to get this?”

Sam shakes his head, meaning he doesn’t know, keeping his mouth closed and tight-lipped around the secret of Lucifer. He’s pretty sure it doesn’t matter how close he is to anyone, the Harvelles or the Walker-Henriksens or, fuck, even Bobby; if it gets out that he’s having casual sex—with another guy, no less—he probably won’t even live to see the inside of the jail cell he’d get thrown in. 

Jo shrugs. “Well,” she says, “let’s go, then,” and the three of them head off in the direction opposite the Market. 

The casino they gamble in, well-lit and actually insulated, is almost a mile away from the Market. They’re forced to walk past the entrance to the faction on their way, and Lucifer’s leaning against the gate when they pass, eyes half-lidded and mouth loose and relaxed in the dark. The sight sends all sorts of thoughts, dark and overheated, tumbling through Sam’s mind.

“Oh dear,” Jo says, with her eyes on Lucifer.

“Don’t worry about it,” Sam says. “He’s not going to do anything.” He locks his eyes on Lucifer’s, lifting an eyebrow, and Lucifer turns casually away, facing out over the plains and low-rolling hills that surround the faction. The rain is hitting his uniform, dark leather jacket and pants made out of some stiff material Sam isn’t familiar with. Creating damp patches at his collar, curling the ends of his hair against his neck. 

There isn’t much light to see by, but Sam still notices, and feels heat unfurl and crawl across his stomach. He clenches his hands in his pockets, gritting his teeth and moving forward. 

“Do we all have something good to bet?” Jo asks when they’re far enough away from the entrance to be out of earshot. It’s not safe to talk about gambling around anyone other than their little group, especially not a guard. 

Sam’s tactfully decided against mentioning just how much Lucifer knows about the casinos. 

“Two strips of jerky,” Ash starts, and then stops, glancing over at Sam, wary eyed. 

“You had two strips of jerky,” Sam says flatly. “Back at my stall.”

“I—”

Sam pulls the orange rind out of his pocket, holding it disdainfully between two fingers. “You gave me a goddamn orange peel and you could’ve traded a stick of jerky instead?”

“Oh, like it fucking matters, Sam, like we don’t all know you’re gonna win tonight anyway,” Ash snaps, ignoring the cautious hand Jo’s placed on his arm. “Just trying to keep some rations as long as possible. You know how that is, right?” He pauses, eyes narrowed, then sneers. “Or you would, if you and your brother didn’t hustle everyone with cards in their hands.”

“Ash,” Jo says warningly.

“No, it’s fine,” Sam says, waving a hand at her, glaring at her brother, at his hand clenched tight around the sticks of jerky in his pocket. It’s not Ash’s fault he lied about the food, that’s just the way it is here. Sam can call them friends all he wants, but the ragged truth is that no one—aside from Amelia and possibly Meg, people at the Market that don’t gamble for whatever reason—actually, honestly, _likes_ him. Him or Dean. Sam’s learned how to get used to it, the false smiles and hard eyes. He doesn’t care if no one trusts him. If it means he doesn’t have to go hungry for a while, whatever. He’ll give them their knives and they’ll give him their food; it balances.

They arrive at the casino still glaring at each other. Sam pushes the orange peel back into his pocket and watches Ash’s pocket shifting with the weight of his jerky sticks. He wonders if Ash got his hands on salt, if the jerky actually has flavor this time. 

They duck out of the rain, spend a few seconds shivering under an awning and wiping the water off their sleeves, and then Sam pushes the door open, and they go in. 

The casino itself is subterranean, down three flights of stairs and a seventy foot-long hallway because whatever its original purpose was had something to do with bombs. Sam doesn’t know anything about bombs, aside from the fact that they “blow shit up” (Dean’s phrasing) and have been illegal for a little over seventy years (according to Bobby’s texts), but the remnants of that time are still etched into the cement walls here. Sam runs a finger across long scratch marks as they walk, tallies of time and phrases like “we were here 02/04/18” and “must not let Them get us”. 

That last one has been Sam’s favorite since he started coming down here.

Eventually they reach the end of the hallway, and Sam’s briefly surprised, the way he always is, at how warm it is down here. Sweat trickles down the back of his neck, curling the ends of his hair and dampening his shirt collar. He pulls out his identification card and walks up to the person guarding the entrance.

Turns out it’s Ellen Harvelle. Ash and Jo’s mother, a woman that Sam can never tell as to how she really feels about the Winchesters—though he’d bet a month’s worth of rations that she hates them, same as everyone else, considering the fact that their father is at least partially responsible for her husband’s death. 

And she was actually in love with the man before he got killed.

Sam doesn’t think about that now, pressing his card into her hand and flashing his temporary, tense smile, the one that feels about as false as it looks. “Evening, Ellen.”

She slides the card through a slot in the wall, something magnetic and gas-run that crackles when touched. Sam vaguely understands how it works, wires and lightning and fire, but he doesn’t trust anything he can’t see and he hates these few seconds before he’s allowed in. This uncertainty that crawls into his chest and settles next to the restless clawing sensation just under his ribcage.

“Samuel,” she replies finally, taking his card out and handing it back to him, his DNA seared and fried with magnetic discharge on the back. “You try to let someone else win for a change tonight, huh?” 

She means her children, of course, but Sam just smiles again, tight-lipped. “We’ll see,” he says, and moves to make room for Jo and Ash.

The door to the casino is unlocked automatically when anyone’s card gets scanned and approved, so Sam pushes it open and moves in. _This_ is where he belongs, he thinks, feeling a little more settled as he walks towards an empty table in the smoke-filled room. This world of gamblers and liars and people who call themselves something else but are really no better than thieves. 

Sam slides into his seat, wooden and cracked and short-legged so that it wobbles every time Sam leans to the right. There’s a pack of cards in the center of the table, a half-finished cigarette smoldering in the ashtray, and Sam lifts it to his mouth, draws in a breath. He shuffles the cards and slips himself a king as he passes the rest around the table—hand for Ash, hand for Jo, hand for himself. The king is split halfway down the middle, a crease right where his belly is cut in half, and Sam rubs his thumb across its well-worn surface, smearing it with grease and sweat and nicotine. He takes another drag on his cigarette and exhales, watching the smoke cloud over the flares from the gas lamps overhead.

A few minutes later, Jo and Ash join him, and the game starts.

“What’re we playing tonight,” Ash asks, lifting his hand and looking it over, face neutral.

“Poker.” Sam presses his cigarette into the ashtray, folds his fingers carefully around his cards and slides his thumb along the edge of his cards. If there was such a thing as luck, Sam would believe it lay in the king. He’s snuck one into his deck nearly every gambling session for the past ever, and he’s lost maybe three games in all that time.

Jo allows herself a small smile. “How excellent,” she says, and looks at her own cards.

“I have the jerky,” Ash says, and puts it on the table. He glares at Sam, and Sam stares back, level. Fingers running over the king in his deck again and again, and he sticks the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and holds it there as he rummages in his pockets.

“Orange peel,” he says, tossing it on the table and thinking of Lucifer. 

“Cheese cube,” says Jo, and Sam raises his eyebrows at the size of it; dairy’s hard to come by unless you know someone, and Sam can’t imagine Jo fucking a guard or working the Market—or, anyway, he can’t imagine Ellen letting her. 

“All right,” Sam says, when they’re all done, voice soft and just this side of a threat because he knows people who try to run off with all the food at the start of games. “Let’s play.”

Ten minutes in, Sam’s king gets him a full house and he throws his additional betting material—two wafers and a strip of fish—into the center of the table, narrowly missing the ashtray. 

“Think you’re winning, Winchester?” Ash asks.

Sam shrugs. “You tell me.”

Ash looks at Jo, and adds his second strip of jerky. “I can taste that fish,” he says, glaring at it like it’s done him a personal offense.

Sam holds onto his king, draws another card. Four of a kind, now, and he feels a jolt in his chest, hard and fast, like lightning. Curves his wrist inward and splays his palm flat against his thigh.

Jo pulls out a battered tin—“basil leaves,” she says, and Sam’s got no doubt in his mind now that she’s illegally obtaining—and smacks it down next to her brother’s jerky. Draws a card, arm trembling.

“Okay,” Sam says, eyes flitting from one to the other. 

“Straight,” Ash says, grinning, slapping his cards down, and Jo makes an abortive movement towards the food.

“Hold up,” Sam says, and spreads his hand out for them to see. Jo’s face falls, and Ash’s mouth slips into a snarl.

“You fucking cheater,” he says, angry, as Sam picks their food off the table and stuffs it into his pockets. The casino goes kind of quiet, a dark undertone sneaking its way into the atmosphere, but Sam shrugs it off the way he’s shrugged this sort of thing off his whole life and tips Ash and Jo a half-smile.

“See you,” he says, and walks out before either of them can make a move.

It’s stopped raining by the time Sam gets topside, and the night air feels good on his skin. Cold and fresh, in comparison to the stuffy underground scent of the casino. He walks slow, not in any particular rush to get back to the hostel, chewing on his new strip of jerky and looking up at the black streaks of clouds overhead.

He passes the entrance to the faction, and “Hello, Sam,” comes at him out of the dark.

Lucifer’s standing at his post, looking tired but pleased to see Sam, mouth curved into a smile at the corners and Sam approaches him, cautious. “Hey,” he says, not bothering with formalities because there’s no one else to listen.

“Did you win a good hand tonight?” Lucifer asks, unfolding his arms and leaning forward. Acting like he’s really interested in whether or not Sam’s going to survive this week, although Sam doubts his concern goes any deeper than the fact that Sam is Lucifer’s—what, fuckmate, lover, Sam doesn’t know the correct term.

“Yeah.” Sam reaches into his pocket, pulls the orange peel out. 

“Looks very plentiful, Sam.” There’s an edge of sarcasm in Lucifer’s voice, mild amusement and something bordering on affection as he looks from the rind to Sam’s face and back. 

“Well, this isn’t all I got, _Lucifer_ ,” Sam returns, equally sarcastic and biting laughter back into his throat. “Thought you’d maybe wanna—” and then he stops, sudden color flooding his cheeks, because this is stupid. It was stupid of Sam to assume that someone from a family like Lucifer’s, with real food and jobs that don’t break your back when you do them, would want to even _look_ at an orange peel. Sam doesn’t even know what he’s doing here, for fuck’s sake, holding out his stolen goods as if Lucifer’s going to like him any more just because he has more than most people.

Lucifer raises an eyebrow when Sam doesn’t finish his sentence. “What, Sam,” he coaxes.

Sam swallows, rough and unsteady. Pushes a hand through his hair and shoves the peel back into his jacket. His heart is pounding and he doesn’t know why, he feels dizzy and uncertain and he doesn’t like it. “Nothing,” he says, digging his heels back into the ground and looking up. “I think it’s gonna start raining again, I better be heading back.” 

Lucifer hesitates before nodding, turning away from Sam and facing out over the vast, barren landscape before them. “Michael will be here tomorrow,” he says, quiet and almost apologetic. “So I may be late, if I’m able to come at all.”

Sam shakes his head, even though Lucifer can’t see him. “It’s fine,” he says. “Goodnight, Lucifer.”

“‘Night, Sam,” Lucifer murmurs, and Sam trudges on down the road, his mouth dry, a continuous dull, aching want slashed through his chest.

*

The thing Sam has to remember about Lucifer is that it wasn’t supposed to turn out this way.

As a rule, lessers—crass term for people living in the slums, a word that makes Sam cringe every time he hears it—don’t normally interact with the ones guarding their factions. They’re all living in completely separate circles, and as long as you do what you’re told—church on Sundays, no cursing or drinking or smoking or gambling or sex outside marriage, be in by a certain hour of the night and go to work six days a week—generally the guards will leave you alone. Sam’s known this his entire life, it’s just a fact and it’s not going away.

Sam also hasn’t abided by any rules other than his own and Dean’s since he was somewhere between eleven and thirteen.

They don’t have any system set up in the factions to watch every single person. Something like that doesn’t exist, Sam couldn’t imagine it existing, and he’s been taking advantage of the lack of monitoring since he can remember. The Market, mostly, but also going back to his hostel after gambling, skipping church once a month so he can sleep in on Sunday—and Lucifer.

The first time Sam and Lucifer had any real interaction was six months ago, though Sam had been noticing him long before then. Michael, Lucifer’s brother, was off duty, and Sam was having a rough day—Dean hadn’t written him in well over a month and that restless, tearing sensation in his chest was getting worse. Making him want to do—something. Something reckless and dangerous and borderline suicidal. 

He scrawled a note out to Dean in his hostel— _dude where the fuck are you_ , not caring if it got intercepted because his writing was nearly illegible anyway—and shifted and ducked his way to the faction’s entrance, taking side alleys and avoiding people. He thought if he could climb over the wall without being noticed, he could make it to the post office. Technically, lessers aren’t supposed to use the post either, but Sam and Dean know Jody, who runs the main headquarters near the Center, and they’ve been getting away with it for most of their lives.

Sam was almost at the entrance when he saw Lucifer, second eldest of the Morningstar family and potential heir to Charles Morningstar’s government position when he died. Alone and standing stiff in front of the gates, eyes fixed on nothing in the distance, and Sam felt his throat go dry. He didn’t especially like how out of control he felt when he saw Lucifer. The almost tangible heat in his chest, the weight in his stomach. It wasn’t a feeling Sam was familiar with, like falling into empty space with his eyes closed.

“Shit,” Sam breathed, and of course Lucifer heard him. 

“Winchester,” Lucifer said, turning and staring at him. His eyes dragged from Sam’s mouth down to his hips and back, and Sam shivered without thinking—cold, he remembers thinking, when he allows himself to think about that day at all. The air had been crackling with frost. “You shouldn’t use language like that.” There was something slow and threatening in his voice, and Sam felt a visceral panic run through him, almost smothering the faint heat coiling in his stomach. 

“I apologize,” Sam said, staring at the scuffed ends of Lucifer’s boots on the gravel.

Lucifer made an indistinct sound, and when Sam looked up again he was closer, almost close enough to touch. Sam felt his breath catch hard in his throat, heart racing. 

“Samuel,” Lucifer said, because he called him that back then, before—well. Before. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”

Sam wet his lips with his tongue and let himself imagine Lucifer tracking the movement with his eyes because he was too tired to care anymore. “Taking a walk—”

“Lying is a sin.” Casual and almost friendly, but the threat ran like an undercurrent in his tone and Sam shivered again. Held out his note, folded and damp with sweat from inside his jacket, and Lucifer took it. Opened it up and read it over, eyes tracing the words before snapping up to Sam’s face.

“This is for your brother,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.”

“Dean Winchester?”

“Yes.”

Lucifer’s eyebrows creased over his nose. “Where does he live?”

“Faction seventeen.” Sam didn’t know where the questions were headed, but he knew that if Lucifer wanted, he could have Sam killed in less than five minutes. He kept his mouth shut while Lucifer turned away, facing outward again, drumming his fingers idly against his thigh, the note pressed between his thumb and the fine denim of his pants.

“Were you planning on delivering this yourself, Samuel?” he asked finally, turning back. The expression on his face held a vague warning, and Sam said “yes” without thinking, then winced. Expected something to happen—hellfire raining down, maybe. Michael to appear out of nowhere with handcuffs in one of those strange loud vehicles only people from the Center owned. Lucifer to whip out a pistol and shoot Sam right there in the street. Something. 

Instead, Lucifer nodded, slow and almost thoughtful, and tucked the note into his own pocket. The jacket he was wearing was made of real leather, not the cheap imitation Sam had on, and Sam didn’t think, didn’t even consider the consequences before he reached out to touch.

Lucifer jerked back like Sam had burned him and for a few seconds the air was tense between them, hot, and Sam wanted to turn away, run down the road and put some kind of distance between himself and Lucifer. Like it would prevent his death, but still. It was the principle of the thing.

It was a long, painful minute before Sam realized that Lucifer was talking. Words falling from his lips and Sam couldn’t hear through the panicked white noise in his brain, had to shake his head a few times and ask Lucifer to repeat himself.

“I’ll take your letter to the post office,” Lucifer said, patient; something like dry amusement in the back of his voice. “Faction seventeen, yes?”

Sam swallowed, rough and too fast, and choked into his sleeve. “Yeah,” he managed, face flushed, and Lucifer laughed, soft and without malice.

“All right, Samuel,” he said.

That was the first time.

*

It’s mid-afternoon, and this is the seventh time Sam has slept with Lucifer.

They don’t talk, no time because Michael’s on guard today and there’s only so much sneaking around Lucifer can get away with. Lucifer’s on Sam almost before Sam has even shut the door, pushing him against the wall and dragging his hand through his hair. Sam gasps into his mouth at the savagery of the kiss, reaching between them to grab Lucifer’s belt loops and pull him forward. Wanting to feel all of him, all at once. 

“What’d you tell Michael, where does he think you are,” Sam asks, letting Lucifer suck kisses into his jaw and against the side of his neck.

“At church,” Lucifer mutters into Sam’s skin, and then smiles against his throat as Sam laughs.

“Blasphemy is a sin,” Sam tells him, grinding up and moaning at the feeling of Lucifer already half-hard through his pants.

Lucifer’s hands are on his jeans now, working his thumb against the button and pushing down. They’re sinking slowly to the floor, and Sam wants what’s coming, he’s hungry for it, aching and stunned by the force and capacity of his desire. “So is this,” Lucifer tells him, pressing him against the floor, rough carpet burning against his now-bare thighs. “Punishable by death, as I recall.”

Sam smirks. “So shut up and condemn me already,” he says, voice a tangled mess at the back of his throat, and Lucifer makes a curious, low sound, pulling on his pants and kicking them off, rutting against Sam with only the cloth of his shorts and the cotton of Lucifer’s between them.

“Jesus,” Sam gasps out, “fucking _Christ_ , Lucifer,” fingers scrabbling for purchase on Lucifer’s back, in his hair, lifting his hips and throwing his head back, exposing the arch of his neck. 

Then Lucifer’s hand slips into Sam’s shorts and Sam is gone, absolutely and irrevocably wrecked. He kisses Lucifer to muffle the sounds he’s making, embarrassing keening noises wrenched up from his chest, and Lucifer sucks on his tongue, digging his fingers into Sam’s side as his other hand works on him, disappeared below the wrist into the gray cloth covering Sam’s waistline. 

Sam goes tense, making a nonsensical sound that could be Lucifer’s name, and Lucifer pulls back to watch, eyes locked on Sam’s, mouth red and open, cock still a hard line under his own shorts as he presses down against Sam’s thigh. He pulls once, twice more and Sam comes, shaking, into his hand. The burn of the carpet hot against his legs but all Sam can feel is the heat in his body, hard tingling sensation that makes him curl his toes into Lucifer’s skin. 

“That okay?” Lucifer asks, breathing the words into Sam’s collarbone.

Sam nods. Lets his eyelids fall and only opens them again when he feels Lucifer lifting himself off Sam’s body. Lucifer slips his hand into his boxers and Sam watches, cock stirring in interest, as Lucifer’s arm flexes with every pull, teeth sunk into his lower lip, a flush rising up the sides of his neck and onto his face. His expression doesn’t change when he comes, but he exhales, slow and rough, and Sam feels the muscles in his legs go tense where they rest on Sam’s hips.

For a while after, they lie side by side, Sam’s chest rising and falling slowly as he watches Lucifer, splayed out and vulnerable on the floor. Lucifer stares up at the ceiling, and Sam stares at the faint red marks littering his collarbones.

“What did you want to show me yesterday?” Lucifer asks.

“Oh.” Sam rolls over, grabs at his jacket. Face heating up as he finds the orange peel still stuck in his pocket, and he hands it to Lucifer, who rubs his thumb across the back, inhaling. “You could make the whole room smell like that, if you tried,” he says, hesitant, fully aware that Lucifer probably has a myriad of orange-flavored things on hand back at the Center. That Lucifer may never say it outright, the way Michael would, but he’s probably looking down on Sam for this.

Lucifer smiles, faint. “There is nothing I want more to do than to make your hostel smell like the inside of an illegally gained fruit peeling, Sam.”

“Oh, shut up,” Sam says, pushing at Lucifer’s shoulder with his own. “Like I would’ve gotten it at all if you weren’t looking the other way all the time.”

Lucifer glances at Sam out of the corner of his eyes. “Are you trying to imply that I’m suddenly approving of your dissolute and rebellious lifestyle?” There are creases at the corners of his eyes, soft laugh lines, and Sam feels something warm and unfamiliar explode behind his ribs.

“Just the parts that smell like citrus,” he says, and Lucifer laughs, mouth going loose and relaxed in the weak light of the afternoon sun.

Sam likes that he can make Lucifer look that way, sort of soft and easy to deal with, not at all like the rough soldier he’s supposed to be outside. 

“It’s certainly better than walking in here and finding you dead of starvation on the floor,” Lucifer admits, quiet, after a while, slow flush rising up the side of his neck and spreading across his jaw. 

Sam raises an eyebrow in surprise, rolling onto his side to face Lucifer fully. “It would mean one less of us to deal with,” he starts, and then stops, startled by the expression on Lucifer’s face. It’s cold, almost dangerous—a warning, some type of barely suppressed fury that Sam doesn’t understand, not coming from him. From someone of the Center, who shouldn’t actually care about the life of one lesser. 

Even if Sam is fucking around with Lucifer on a pretty regular basis, he knows good and damn well that in the end, nothing will ever come of it. The vague, heavy feeling that stirs in his chest when he sees him—that’s just incidental. The end results will be that they will be caught, and Sam will be killed. 

“Don’t you dare to presume—” Lucifer starts, voice a soft, angry snarl, eyes cutting into Sam’s, but then he stops. Blinks, and visibly banks back the intensity of his rage, rolling onto his side, mirroring Sam’s position. His hand comes out and curls into Sam’s hair. 

Sam allows his eyes to fall shut, exhaling softly. He’s aware of time moving on, that they have maybe ten minutes left before he has to go to the Market and Lucifer has to go placate his brother, but he. He just doesn’t _care_ , right now. There’s an idea coalescing in the back of his mind, half-formed and uncertain, and he reaches up to wrap his hand around the smooth skin of Lucifer’s knuckles. Opens his eyes in time to see Lucifer’s lips part, a pained expression etched into the lines on his face. 

“Sam,” Lucifer says quietly.

“Luce,” Sam replies, using the nickname they rarely acknowledge but that always makes Lucifer’s mouth twitch at the corners. “I. I need to ask you something.”

“Anything, Sam.”

He draws in a breath. “Do you—I mean. If you were presented with the opportunity to—to change things here. Would you take it?” He looks at the window immediately after, as if, after all these months, the patrols would choose _today_ to visit Faction 24. As if they’d arrest Sam and Lucifer over speaking out against the government, instead of being sprawled out naked and covered in sweat in the cramped, dusty space of Sam’s room.

Sam isn’t aware of any shift in the mood until he feels Lucifer’s fingers withdraw from his scalp. Looks back and Lucifer is staring at him, curiously neutral, flat glint to his eyes.

“Not just you,” Sam says, voice going hesitant as he watches Lucifer’s face. “I mean, I’d be there, and Dean, and—”

“That’s enough, Sam,” Lucifer interrupts, pushing up into a standing position and reaching down to grab his clothes. The cold, quiet fury is back in his expression, but it’s directed outward now, and Sam feels a shiver run down his spine. The fact that they’re sleeping together, that doesn’t change Sam’s subordinate status in comparison to Lucifer’s. He keeps forgetting when to hold his tongue, how far he’s allowed to go before it becomes too much.

Sam watches him dress, the fancy denim of his pants and the shiny thick leather jacket. He’s lacing his boots when Sam manages to pull the words from his throat:

“Lucifer. I’m sorry for bringing it up.”

Lucifer glances at him, making Sam vaguely aware of how ridiculous he must look, lying on the floor. 

“I have to get back to Michael,” he says. “He’ll be wondering what’s happened to me by now,” and then the door is opening and shutting, and Lucifer is gone.

Sam sits up, a frustrated noise escaping his lips, and rubs the sheen of sweat off his skin before getting dressed.

*

“Ah, there he is,” Ash says as Sam spreads his knives out over his stall, fingers faintly purple from the cold air. “World’s favorite cheater.”

“Fuck off, Harvelle, I’m not dealing with you right now,” Sam mutters. He can’t stop thinking about Lucifer, faintly worried that now he’ll be pissed enough at Sam to tell. Even at the cost of revealing his own actions in the matter. The worst thing that could happen to Lucifer would be that he’d get sent to a different faction. But Sam—

Sam probably wouldn’t have time to write his brother a letter before he was hanged. 

“Well, maybe I’d like to deal with you,” Ash says, and Sam feels fingers pressed against his throat before he looks up. Ash is leaning halfway across the table that separates Sam from his customers, backed by Gordon Walker and his brother Victor Henriksen, both of whom Sam generally tends to avoid because of the rumors that they’re both insane to a certain degree. 

Sam narrows his eyes into slits, exhaling sharply and curving his fingers around the edge of his table. “That’s real fuckin’ courteous of you and all, but I have a job to do right now. Maybe if you could come back later.”

In response, Gordon leans over, grabs one of Sam’s knives from where they’re so carefully spread out in their bin. “He said he wants to deal with you, Winchester,” Gordon snarls, knife directed at Sam’s throat below where Ash’s fingers are pressed. “You’d better rise to the occasion.”

Dean always did say that Sam’s smart mouth was going to come back to bite him in the ass sooner or later.

“You and Victor don’t even gamble with us,” Sam says, wary. Eyes trained on the knife blade where it’s quivering at his pulse.

“We don’t like cheaters any more than anyone else in this faction,” Victor says. He’s always sneering when he’s talking to Sam, like Sam’s beneath him. Like Victor and Gordon have had some kind of opportunities that the Winchesters were never offered.

“All of us are starving, Henriksen.” Sam reaches out, folds his fingers against the handle of a knife and draws it closer to him. “Pretty sure cheating at a little poker game is the least harmful thing someone’s gonna do to get food.”

“So you’re saying you ain’t gonna stop,” Gordon says, his own eyes narrowed, mirroring Sam’s furious, borderline lethal expression. “You’re not gonna give anyone else an equal chance at winning.”

Sam smirks. It’s dangerous, he knows, but honestly he’s beyond the point of caring. He reaches out with his knife and drags the tip of the blade along Gordon’s forearm, not deep enough to crack the skin but enough to leave a faint mark, odd-looking against his dark skin and disappearing almost immediately afterwards. “My DNA isn’t coded like that,” he says, and then Ash’s hand moves from his throat to his wrist, Gordon carves a deep gash into the crook of his elbow, and it’s officially on.

Sam is only vaguely aware of Amelia screaming, running off. The rest of his body is focused on surging forward, almost catapulting over the stall in an effort to get at his attackers. Ash and Victor grab at knives of their own but Sam and Gordon are already slashing at each other, blades bright in the mid-afternoon pale sun and scraping in the air. Sam swipes down, rips the thin fabric of Gordon’s sleeve. From behind him, someone—Victor, probably—kicks out a foot, hooking around Sam’s ankle and catching him off balance. He stumbles and manages to slash an arc at Ash’s legs, sees the bright red spray of blood come up from his right thigh, and then he’s hitting his knees in the gravel of the road. 

Behind him, Victor’s got a handful of his hair and is tugging backwards, the knife pushing into Sam’s shoulder, searing pain that Sam has to grit his teeth against because he’s focusing on holding Gordon at arm’s length to prevent him from cutting his throat open. He manages to get out of Victor’s hard grasp and back to his feet again, but immediately afterwards Ash is attacking him, half with the knife and half with his fists, and Sam has to slice at any skin he can reach—arms, legs, chest—to keep Ash off. 

“Wild man,” Gordon pants, while Sam struggles to jerk out of the tight grip Victor now has on his shirt collar, swinging punches and still maintaining a tight hold on his knife. “Why don’t you just give up and let it go?”

“I’m not the one who has a sudden problem with fucking over the system,” Sam snarls back, and then lets out a cry of surprised pain as Ash’s knife sinks into his arm, directly below where Victor had been carving into his skin just moments before. “ _Christ_ , Harvelle,” he yells, spinning, and manages to kick Victor below the knee, temporarily disengaging his grip long enough for Sam to turn and get the knife in a hard slash across Ash’s left leg.

“Owfuck!” Ash yelps, and falls to his knees.

With one man down, Sam turns to face his two remaining attackers, who are starting to develop that rumored insanity in their eyes, but before any of them can do anything there’s a shout of:

“Put the knives on the ground and get down right now!” and Sam turns to find Michael and Lucifer running towards them, with Amelia directly behind. She shoots Sam an apologetic glance which he shrugs off, allowing his knife to fall to the ground before dropping to his knees beside Ash, Victor, and Gordon.

Michael is holding a pistol—shiny metallic object that Sam hates—and brandishing it at their heads. As if any of them would be stupid enough to try and run now, with two guards from the Center on their asses. Lucifer won’t look directly at Sam; stands off to the side a ways, arms clasped behind his back, trained tight expression on his face. 

“Well, well, well,” Michael says. “What do we have here?” He walks over to Ash, who is making tiny hissing noises under his breath from the pain in his legs, and brushes the barrel against the back of his head. 

“It’s nothing,” Gordon snarls, speech slurred, and Sam watches in surprise as he spits out a mouthful of blood. He pauses, then turns hate-filled eyes up to Michael’s face and adds, all disdain and contempt, “ _Sir_.”

Michael’s back visibly stiffens. “Your arrogant nature has preceded you, Walker,” he says, taking the gun off Ash’s head and pushing it against Sam’s temple. “I suppose it was either you or Winchester who started this.”

Gordon’s quiet for a second, and Sam feels something close tight like a fist inside his chest. If any of them say what the fight was about, it would mean revealing that they’ve been gambling. Sam’s pretty sure Michael seeing the Market in full operation is enough to get most, if not all, of them sent to prison anyway, but the casino—Sam imagines electrocution, drowning, a public flogging that would drain them all of their blood. 

“Winchester has a big mouth,” Victor spits out, and Michael turns to him, face cut and bruised, mouth trickling blood at the corner. “Suppose he just got my brother riled, that’s all.”

“And you all had to get involved in the fighting,” Michael says. Sam doesn’t like the way his voice dips, cool and sure. He thinks Michael knows good and damn well what they’ve been up to, that he’s just stalling for time until one of them cracks and admits something by accident.

“Well,” Ash says, “we’re all friends, we just thought it would be nice if we could—”

“Shut up, Harvelle, I was not speaking to you.” Michael looks at Lucifer, who takes a step forward, hands coming from behind his back. He’s not holding anything, which surprises Sam, but there’s a certain bulk to his pocket which suggests he’s got the same weapon as his brother. 

“You’re all lucky I’m in a benevolent mood today following a wonderful Mass this morning,” Michael says, walking around them, dragging the gun against each of their heads. The metal is cold in the afternoon wind, and Sam shivers at the unpleasantness of the touch long after Michael has passed him up. “As it is, I’ll only be bringing the four of you in for questioning—”

Questioning means jail, probably for life, Sam isn’t stupid and he can see by the expressions in both Gordon and Victor’s eyes that they’ve figured it out too. They’re making protesting noises before Michael has finished speaking and in a flash he’s got the gun pressed between Gordon’s eyes, an ugly sneer curling his lips as he looks down. “Shut _up_ , you filthy lesser, or I’ll shoot you where you kneel in this street.”

Gordon goes quiet, but the hate in his eyes as he looks up at Michael is almost tangible, and crushing with its weight. For a second Sam almost regrets not getting along with the guy. He knows how Gordon feels right now, can see it in the murderous flare of his nostrils, the way his jaw keeps clenching. It’s humiliating, the way they’re being forced to kneel like this in the streets, gun to their heads, blood trickling from their open wounds. Ash’s face is contorted in pain, and Sam knows the slashes on his legs must burn like fire. 

“Good,” Michael says, when it’s clear none of them are going to speak. “Now. Get up, one at a time, and _slowly_. If anyone tries to run—” He waves the gun in the air, and Sam barely holds back an eye roll at the ridiculous gesture. 

They’re getting to their feet—Ash moving more painfully than the others—when Lucifer steps forward again, holding out his hand. “Wait, brother,” he says, and Michael looks at him, annoyance flashing across his features.

“ _What_ , Lucifer.”

Lucifer leans in and whispers something, too low for Sam to catch but it makes Michael’s eyebrows shoot up and something spark in his eyes. A dangerous eagerness that Sam instinctively recoils from. 

“Samuel Winchester,” Michael says, still training the gun on Gordon, Victor, and Ash, but making a gesture at Sam with his free hand. “You are to stay here.”

Sam looks at Lucifer, barely tipping his head to the side in a question, but Lucifer doesn’t make any sign that he understands what Sam is trying to ask. 

“Okay,” Sam says, looking at Michael, “why?”

Michael looks like Sam just asked him if he’d prefer to eat scum or shit for dinner. “I don’t think it’s your place to question my orders, Winchester,” he snarls. “Bleed to death on your own ground instead of mine, that’s all I’m saying.” He reaches out and grabs at Gordon’s wrist, and Gordon jerks away from him, hissing like a python. 

“The fu—”

“Language, Walker,” Michael reprimands without even looking at him, and then, “The three of us are still going to the Center.” 

“Oh, he won’t make it—” Amelia says, meaning Ash, whose legs are still bleeding profusely from the cuts Sam administered.

Michael glares at Amelia, who shuts her mouth. “Like I really care,” he says to her, sneering again, and then presses the gun into the small of Victor’s back. “Let’s _go_ ,” and the four of them head out of the Market, Ash wincing with every step, Gordon still spitting blood, and Victor’s face an angry twisted snarl as he looks over his shoulder at Michael the whole way out.

Once they’re gone, Lucifer looks at Sam. Expression level, as neutral as it was back in the hostel, and Sam struggles to keep his the same, fully aware of how hard his heart is pounding, and how badly his injured arm and shoulder ache. 

“I’ve had time to think,” Lucifer says, voice low because everyone’s still kind of staring at them, the guard speaking to someone from a faction, standing close enough to touch him—or nearly. “I changed my mind, Sam.” He pauses, eyebrows lifted, evidently waiting for something. Some type of reaction, but Sam’s not, he doesn’t—

Oh.

 _Oh_. 

Sam tries so hard to school his expression, but he can’t keep the smile from flitting from one corner of his mouth to the other, bright unrestrained happiness that he hasn’t felt in _months_. “Seriously?”

Lucifer nods. Gives Sam’s shoulder a pointed glance, and “Go home,” he says. “Take care of that. We can work on things later.”

Sam nods, even though it hurts his neck. “Okay.” He bites the smile into his cheek, clenches his hand into a fist to try and stem some of the pain. “Okay, thanks.”

Lucifer looks at Sam, something brief and hesitant in his eyes and Sam thinks he’s going to say something else, but he doesn’t, and a second later he’s walking back to his post, boots scuffing along in the gravel road. 

“Here,” Amelia says, as Sam’s closing his stall up and shrugging his jacket back over his uninjured shoulder. “Take this.” She holds out a strip of cloth, and Sam wraps it around his arm, along the wound Ash left since the one from Victor is too difficult to reach. 

“I don’t have anything to trade,” he starts, but she shakes her head.

“Gordon fucked you over,” she says, and he tries not to be too surprised at her sudden harsh language. “This is a favor, you understand?”

“Thanks,” he says.

“Stay safe,” she tells him, without smiling, before turning to greet another customer.

*

The second time Sam ever met Lucifer, he almost got killed.

He was returning to his hostel—had managed to sneak over the wall guarding their faction, in one of those rare places where the bricks were crumbling and the barbed wire, spiked and rumored to be coated in poison that would kill you if you touched it, was no longer in place. Ran six miles to where Jody had agreed to meet him, and got Dean’s reply to his frantic letter from earlier that month: _I’m where I’ve always been, don’t worry about me_. It occurred to him for a brief moment that he was out, could have just kept running with Dean’s letter clutched tight in his fist, but he didn’t have any food and Jody probably would’ve dropped all pretense of getting along with him to shoot him where he stood. Loyalties only ran so far when it came to the Center, and those who worked for it.

So instead of chasing down whatever was out there, past the borders of everything he knew, Sam was once again sneaking along the edge of the inner wall of Faction 24. He’d gone over in the same place, no one was there and he counted that as a win. Figured it was dark enough now to cover him, but not so dark that they’d be looking for people out past curfew yet. 

“Stop where you are, and drop whatever it is you’re holding.”

Or maybe not.

Sam stopped, if only because he didn’t really have a choice in the matter. He let the note fall to the ground, watching it out of the corner of his eyes as he stood there, and hoped that whoever picked it up wouldn’t decide to run a handwriting check.

There was the sound of boots crunching in gravel, sounding unpleasantly hollow and detached in the quiet of nighttime. Sam could make out two shapes heading for him and figured he had about three seconds left to be alive. 

“Samuel,” said one of the shapes, faint surprise curling through the word and oh. It was Lucifer. He came up to Sam in the dim light from the moon, hair glinting silver. There was a fleck of dirt on his cheek and Sam fought back the sudden, reckless impulse to reach out and brush it away. 

His companion, dark haired and slim, cruel edge to his mouth and something cold and inhuman in his eyes, walked forward and stopped beside Lucifer, his head tilted to the side. Sam recognized him after a second—Lucifer’s brother, Michael. The more ruthless of the two; although neither of them was well-liked in the faction, Michael had a worse reputation and Sam didn’t feel comfortable around him. His eyes dropped up and down Sam’s frame, and Sam took a step backwards, felt his foot brush against Dean’s note where it lay on the ground.

“Samuel,” Michael repeated, the name sounding dirty and hard on his tongue. “Winchester? As in John’s son?” 

“Yes,” Sam said, because it wasn’t like Michael didn’t already know.

A small smirk curled at the corner of Michael’s mouth, and he glanced at Lucifer, who was still staring at Sam like he couldn’t quite figure out how they’d come to meet up again. 

“It’s an honor,” Michael said, but Sam knew he was lying. There wasn’t a soul Sam knew of at the Center that didn’t despise John Winchester outright, despite the apparent fact that hatred was a mortal sin.

John had been part of the military when he was alive—which Sam has always figured puts him at about eighteen years of service total. He raised Dean and Sam essentially on his own following his wife’s death, gave them a decent life as army children and Sam has vague, half-formed memories of living near the Center, when he was very young. 

Then John was put at an outpost near Faction 17, where Dean lives now and where all three of them spent a brief period of time. Brief, but it was enough for John to meet Bobby Singer, who ran the middle section of the anti-church, anti-government group that John would join. They called themselves Hunters, but there was no official name. Couldn’t be, with all the risk that would entail. The group was so illegal it was almost impossible to talk about even in private, and Sam didn’t know it existed, not for a long time. Mostly they gathered when they could, spoke out against the church and the Center and vowed to overthrow the government someday, when they could rally up enough forces. 

But John was still part of the military, and they kept moving him. They lived in seven different factions that Sam can remember, each one exactly the same—cold, mostly barren, and miserable. Each faction, John would speak to people about the group. Get them excited for it, and direct them to Bobby Singer—because with his position in the military came free postal access. Dean was in it to a certain extent as well, and he’d go to meetings, telling Sam he was out working odd jobs to keep stale bread and half-rotted lettuce on the table. Sam knew Dean was lying, and wanted the truth, but no one would talk to him about anything aside from occasional vague hints his brother dropped. 

There were a lot of fights between the Winchesters, back then. 

When Sam was almost nineteen, they’d moved to Faction 24. John started being gone more and more often, but Sam was past the point of caring. Got his job at the Market, the one he has now, and established himself and Dean as the best gamblers in the faction as early on as possible, so they wouldn’t get screwed over later. 

The guards busted in on a Hunters’ meeting five months after they’d started living there. Sam was working when it happened, and Dean was over the wall, out past the borders somewhere. He heard about it through Jess, his stallmate before Amelia, heard that “some shit went down by the casinos”, knew John was most likely involved and all he could think the whole time was _Christ now we’re fucked we are so fucked_. By the time he got there, they’d cleared the place out, but the guard remaining told Sam that they’d all been taken to the Center. 

He waited until the heat of the capture had died down some, then climbed the wall, found his brother, and the two of them walked the twenty-mile stretch to the Center’s outposts, where temporary prison barracks were kept for detaining lawbreakers. John was there, still in his military uniform, and they asked when he’d be released, Dean with a fierce tilt to his eyebrows and Sam with that strange, restless feeling clawing at his chest. 

“It’s none of your business,” the guard told them, “now _get_ ,” but they hid out instead, staying a safe mile beyond the borders of the Center and carefully dividing rations between them so they wouldn’t run out. 

On day two, John was expelled from the military. Came stumbling out of the entrance with his face swollen and bruised, spitting blood and pushing a loose tooth around in his mouth. They walked home together, escorted if only to prevent the adjoining factions’ guards from interrogating and attacking on principle, but Sam could feel the hatred swelling off their chaperons, knew the three of them were one false step away from getting crucified in the streets. John had spoken out against the church to their faces, said he was never leaving the Hunters and if they didn’t like it they could all go fuck themselves, and when they finally got back to their hostel and were no longer under surveillance he told Sam and Dean to pack and be ready to leave the faction in the morning.

On day three, seven guards from the Center invaded the Winchesters’ hostel while they were still sleeping. Knocked Dean and Sam back out when they woke up and tried to fight, and dragged John out into the center of the faction, in front of everyone going to church or work or wherever they were headed in the weak morning light. Beat him with iron clubs until he wasn’t breathing, then shot him in the back of the head just to be sure. By the time Sam and Dean were aware of themselves enough to come out, John was long gone, his body dragged out past the faction’s borders and burned into ash. 

Dean left Faction 24 two days later. Said he couldn’t stay there knowing that Bobby was now alone at the head of their group, but Sam knew he was at least partially haunted by the ghost of their father. He packed a stale cheese cube that Sam had won at gambling, three strips of jerky, and a battered canteen of relatively clean water; told Sam he’d be back, and walked off. 

That was six years ago, and since then Sam has seen Dean a total of five times, never in Faction 24 and never for more than ten minutes. The rest of the time, it’s just illegal letters and notes, scrawled shakily and delivered in the half-dark. Usually a safe method, but that second time Sam saw Lucifer—

He was standing at the edge of Faction 24 with Dean’s most recent letter crumpled under his boot, hands trembling at his sides, watching Michael’s fingers play along the edge of his jacket. “I’m trying to decide if I should file you as being killed for leaving the faction, or if it should be for relation to our most troubled dissenter.”

“File it as me leaving the faction, then at least you’ll have concrete evidence,” Sam snapped without thinking. 

Lucifer’s face did a complicated thing, sucking in his cheek between his teeth and cutting his eyes upwards. Michael looked stunned, mouth open, then he laughed, loud and raucous and cold. “You are a daring one, aren’t you.”

“If I’m about to be killed, why should it matter what I say?”

Michael made a scornful noise. “You Winchesters are all alike,” he said. His fingers stopped dancing along his hemline, made a swift movement upward and into his pocket. There was a pause, and then his gun made an appearance, gleaming cold and silver in the light. Sam felt a rip of panic in his chest, he knew guns, had seen what they could do, and God help him but he didn’t want to die, not like that. 

“Not so brave now, are you?” Michael asked, with the gun trained on Sam’s chest.

Sam swallowed, watching Michael. He wanted to look at Lucifer but he didn’t dare, kept his mouth shut and shoved his hands hard against his sides so they wouldn’t see how much he was shaking.

“Get that,” Michael said, gesturing down with his head at Dean’s letter. Lucifer bent down to pick it up, and Sam felt something hot and unexpected flare in his stomach at the sight. 

“It’s a note,” Lucifer said, when he’d straightened up again. He was speaking to Michael, but his eyes were on Sam, something close to a warning in them, and Sam looked from the gun to Lucifer and back, his breathing coming out in short, sharp huffs. 

“Who’s it from, what’s it say,” Michael demanded, pressing at the paper with one hand and keeping his gun steady with the other.

Lucifer unfolded the paper, eyes scanning over the words. His face went still and strange, neutral expression that Sam would become familiar with later, and he pressed the paper into his pocket before Michael could get a hold of it. 

“I don’t know,” Lucifer told him, and Sam felt something like an explosion go off in the center of his chest. Imploding tight and close between his ribs, and if he hadn’t been holding himself so stiff he would’ve collapsed to the ground.

Michael’s eyebrows drew together over the bridge of his nose. “Lucifer,” he started.

“ _I don’t know_ ,” Lucifer repeated, the warning in his eyes now directed vocally at his brother. “I’ll take it to Father, have him look it over. In the meantime, Michael—Samuel can be let off with a warning. This is his first offense.”

Michael darted his eyes between Sam and Lucifer, confused smirk on his face. “You don’t have the book in front of you, how could you know—”

“His first,” Lucifer repeated, firm, and Michael drew in a breath. Shrugged and stepped back, lowering the gun and sliding it back under his jacket. 

“You heard my brother,” he said to Sam. “You get this one warning, Winchester. Don’t go against our laws again, the consequences will be more severe next time.”

“I’ll be sure to remember that,” Sam muttered. There was no real way of thanking Lucifer, not in front of Michael, so he just moved around them, letting the cold air sooth over his terror-flushed skin. 

Sam waited just around the corner, until the soft crunch of Lucifer and Michael’s boots in the gravel had become too distant to distinguish, and then he went home, letting the night swallow him up.

*

The scar tissue on Sam’s shoulder and arm is a mess, pink raw skin that still aches a little when it comes in direct contact with anything rough or metal. He’s got it pressed hard back against the wood of a church pew, struggling to sit still and breathe through his nose and not think at all about the small strip of skin he can see on the back of Lucifer’s neck, five rows ahead of him. 

It’s been a month, or nearly, since he and Lucifer last spoke. There are interims of time where he can see Lucifer when he wants, but this hasn’t been one of them, since the knife fight and all its repercussions. Sam’s had to lay low in his hostel, trading on the Market only in the early morning and spending the rest of his time carefully rationing strips of jerky and basil leaves and, once, an ounce of the watery sludge scraped off the bottoms of bottles in the casinos—the closest thing to alcohol that Sam’s ever had, a hard fast burn into his stomach that leaves him feeling dizzy and vaguely nauseated. 

He wrote a letter to Dean not long after his discussion with Lucifer, slipped over the wall and managed to get it to Jody without any trouble. If Dean’s replied to it Sam doesn’t know; he’s waiting until he sees Lucifer again before he tries anymore outside correspondence, but he knows that Dean will be ready and willing to start a rebellion of any sort, even on a small scale. 

They’re all at Mass now, required on Sundays for the lessers and three, sometimes four times a week for the guards and other citizens of the Center. It’s an ordeal Sam despises, cramming a little over three hundred people into a small wooden church, going from shivering to sweating in five minutes. Sitting in the uncomfortable pews for up to three hours while someone from the Center—sometimes an ordained priest, sometimes not—delivers a sermon from the pulpit. Sam’s listened to every Bible verse twice in the twenty-four years he’s been alive, shoulders shoved up against someone he hardly knows, collar going damp in the heat. 

Sam watches Lucifer shifting where he’s seated, soft curls of hair against the back of his neck going a darker shade of blond and curling on his skin. His head is tilted slightly to the right, watching Father Inias preach about divine retribution and the cost of sin, and all Sam can see in his mind is his hands spread out over Lucifer’s stomach, curled around his cock, mouth sucking bruises into his collarbone. 

Heat flares up in his stomach and Sam goes still and quiet, uncomfortably aware of where he is and the people around him—Amelia to his left, smiling serenely; Meg to his right, permanent smirk curling the corner of her mouth. Up on the altar, there’s a crucifix, Jesus staring down eternally at his followers, and Sam feels it like a lightning bolt, the sinful intensity and depth of his want. Like he’s stood up in the center of church and announced to the entire faction what he’s been doing behind closed doors. It’s terrifying and exhilarating and Sam—

Sam no longer cares.

After the sermon, with everyone milling around and relaxed on the one day that no one works, Sam slips out the pew in the opposite direction, goes up to the front of the church. It’s quieter up there, by the altar rail, and Sam leans against the marble, fingers flexing on the cold stone as he waits for Lucifer to look up and notice him. There’s a risk that Lucifer won’t, of course, because he’s preoccupied with Michael and returning to the Center, but it’s been a month and Sam’s willing to take that chance.

Lucifer glances up, his hand wrapped around the railing. Sam watches his fingers flex against the pew and swallows against the sudden dryness in his throat. There’s a few seconds where they just stare at each other, hazel on ice, and then Lucifer leans over and mutters something in Michael’s ear before edging past his brother and into the aisle. He looks at Sam once, shifts his eyes to the left without moving his head, and walks out of the church, people clearing a path for him because of his status. 

Sam waits a good two and a half minutes before he can’t anymore, and then he pushes himself off the altar and follows Lucifer out.

He’s waiting in a side alley directly to the right of the church, hands shoved into the pockets of his jacket, looking up at the sky. It’s threatening rain, gray and overcast and somehow managing to enhance Lucifer on the whole. He shines, and Sam clenches his hands in his own pockets so he won’t just reach out and touch like he wants to. 

“Sam,” Lucifer says, inclining his head in Sam’s direction.

Sam smiles without really understanding why, keeps his distance and looks up at the sky too, when it becomes clear Lucifer isn’t going to make eye contact. “Lucifer,” he says. “Did you—I mean. Have you thought any more about it? What we talked about?”

Lucifer nods, once, an affirmation that has Sam’s heart speeding up. “Your brother’s letter was received,” he says, and doesn’t elaborate on how he knows. “I believe it would be a good idea to wait until I’m alone on shift before we take any actions, though.”

“Yeah,” Sam says. “Like what. What were you thinking we could do.” He’s reaching out without meaning to, automatic reaction he has around Lucifer, moving forward until he can curl his fingers into Lucifer’s jacket and tug just a little. Lucifer goes compliantly enough, body just hidden by the wall of the alley, though both of them know that the church doors could open at any second. Sam’s pretty sure that Lucifer is doing this more for Sam’s benefit than for his own, but he tries not to think about that too much and just runs his thumb along the edge of the hem of Lucifer’s shirt, staring down at their feet through his hair.

Lucifer looks up, Sam can feel his eyes on him but he’s kind of terrified as to what he might do if they make eye contact right now so he keeps his face down, pretending like scuffed boots on gravel is the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. 

“You said you wanted to change things here,” Lucifer says, after a while.

Sam nods.

“I live at the Center, when I’m not guarding this faction. I know how it’s run, how to get in. When Michael isn’t on shift here, he’s in seclusion in our home. It would present us with an opportunity to leave here, go to the Center, and—” Lucifer pauses, makes a soft unidentifiable clicking noise, and draws a finger across his throat. 

Sam raises his eyebrows, watching Lucifer and the casual way he speaks of murdering his own family. “If we kill them,” he says, slowly, “if we kill all of them, who’s gonna keep the factions up while we try to reestablish a governmental system?”

“There is a possibility that some of my brothers and sisters would be willing to help us set up a temporary system while we sort everything out.” Lucifer’s eyebrows are furrowed over his nose, but he looks calm. Confident, and Sam wonders where it’s coming from, nervous as he is about all this. Because there’s rebellion, and then there’s Rebellion. Sam’s grown up outside the law, gambling and drinking and fucking, when Lucifer came along—but he’s never actively gone against the government, and all he can remember for a few seconds is John, the sound of his skull cracking against the pavement and the blood that was smeared for days into the concrete after they killed him.

Then Lucifer’s hand is on Sam’s jaw, sudden rough touch that Sam wasn’t expecting, and he lets out a low, pained sigh and leans into it, letting Lucifer push his fingers into Sam’s hair, skating across his scalp. “Sam,” Lucifer says, voice low and gentle and strangely cautious. “If you don’t want to.”

“I want to,” Sam says, before Lucifer can go any further. “I’m just. It’s. You know.” He bites his lower lip, sucking it between his teeth, and hopes Lucifer understands what he’s trying to say.

“I know,” Lucifer says, and Sam sighs, tilting his forehead against Lucifer’s for the same amount of time it takes to blink. “It’s all right, Sam.”

They’re quiet for a while. Lucifer’s fingers twine in Sam’s hair, Sam keeps his hand against Lucifer’s shirt hem, and neither of them moves until they hear the church doors creak open and feet spill out onto the pavement.

“We’ll need to collect rations if we’re going all the way to the Center,” Sam says, eyes on the sky again. “And we’ll need to leave at night. Late.”

Lucifer nods. “Figure something out,” he says, and Sam can’t tell if it’s an imperative or not, but before he can ask Michael’s voice sounds over the general area:

“Lucifer, haul out, let’s _go_ ,”

and Lucifer tips his head. Sends Sam a small, apologetic smile, and walks off, fancy leather and denim rustling in the wind and all Sam can think is, _how the hell can he even consider giving that up?_

*

“You’re starting a _what?”_

“Rebellion. R-e-b—”

“Don’t be a fucking jerk about it, Sam, Jesus—” and then Madison has to pause, cross herself out of habit, a fact that amuses Sam considering how much she deals in the black market and how often she gambles—“I was just asking.”

“Yeah, well—are you interested?”

“In what.”

“In the rebellion. You know.”

Madison raises an eyebrow at Sam over a dirt-crusted bottle. “Do you honestly think it’s even going to _happen_ , Sam?”

*

“What, you mean like against the government?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit, Sam, I dunno… are you sure they’re not listening to our conversation right now? Tapping into all this and recording it?”

“They don’t do that.”

“But how do you _know?”_

Sam thinks of Lucifer’s come splashed across his thighs, of loud moans exchanged in the cold air, and he doesn’t answer. 

*

“Where are Victor and Gordon?” Sam asks Amelia one afternoon, when there’s a lull in Market trading.

Amelia shrugs, unfolding a bit of cloth and shaking out the dirt and dust and cockroaches that have gathered in the corners. “I haven’t seen them since you got into that fight. Haven’t seen Ash Harvelle, either,” she adds, brow creasing, and Sam feels something cold and unpleasant slide between his ribs.

Jo walks by then, her hands closed tight around some object—definitely illegal and probably stolen—and Sam calls out to her:

“Jo, hey, you got a second?”

She looks over at him, and Sam doesn’t especially like the expression in her eyes, but he smiles anyway, projecting harmless intentions, and she walks over.

“What.”

“Do you know anything about what happened with your brother and Victor and—”

“I don’t give a fuck about the Walker-Henriksen brothers. But I haven’t heard from Ash since you had his ass hauled out to the Center—”

“What the hell do you mean, _I_ had his ass hauled out, he pulled the knife on me—”

“You certainly didn’t do anything when those guards showed up and started dragging him off for _defending_ us—”

“Oh, right, because I’m just some filthy gambler who’s gonna starve all of you out while I’m eating everyone’s rations in the goddamn faction—”

“Sam!” Shocked yelp from Amelia and Sam is grounded suddenly, finds he’s gripping the edge of his stall so hard his knuckles have gone white. There’s a knife in his hand and Jo has her fingers wrapped around the box holding the others, and Sam doesn’t know what he was about to do, but he relaxes his grip on the blade and backs off, deliberately forcing his shoulders down so he appears smaller.

“Sorry,” he apologizes quietly, though it’s not exactly his fault, and Jo shrugs, steps away as well.

“If my brother’s dead, which my mom and I think he is, ‘sorry’ had better be the only fucking thing on your mind,” she snarls, before storming off. 

“Christ,” Sam mutters, scraping his hand down his face.

*

Trading gets slower; people are wary around Sam, like they’re just starting to notice his height and the width of his shoulders and the cruel animalistic slant to his eyes. He doesn’t care, he’ll be out soon enough anyway, but it makes him uncomfortable just the same, the way everyone goes out of their way to avoid his stall for fear he might lose his temper and slice up their arms too. It’s having less people on his side when the rebellion finally happens, less people he can count on to back him up and more people who will turn him in, him and Lucifer both, if it means they get to keep their lives and their semblance of freedom.

Not that any of that will matter, in the end, if it’s Lucifer who gives Sam up, but. Sam can’t afford to think like that. 

It’s nearly a week after their conversation outside the church before Sam and Lucifer are able to meet up again, after oh-five hundred, when the Market’s closed down and everyone is heading back for their hostels or sneaking down to the casino. Lucifer is waiting for Sam at the entrance to the Market, ignoring the blatant stares he’s getting, arms folded across his chest as he stares out.

“Hey,” Sam calls.

Lucifer looks up and doesn’t quite manage to hide the smile that curls the corner of his mouth. “Hello, Sam.”

Sam walks over to him, until they’re about a foot apart. Folds his arms in a mirroring position and stares at Lucifer in his peripheral vision, the line of his jaw and the set of his shoulders. “Michael’s not here?”

“He’s at the Center. It will have to be tonight, are you ready?” Lucifer raises an eyebrow at Sam, and Sam’s yes gets caught in his throat, so he settles for nodding instead. And then, when he finds he can speak again:

“Did you come up with a plan yet, Lucifer?”

Lucifer tucks his lower lip between his teeth, causing a slight flush to break out over his skin. Even in the half-dark and the cold, and Sam watches, unashamed and too tired to hide it, what he’s doing.

“The casino,” Lucifer says.

“What about it.”

“You said we needed rations, yes?” and suddenly Sam sees where Lucifer’s going with this. He smiles with his eyes, an unexpected swell of pride rising up in his chest.

“You’ll have to gamble, you know,” he says.

“I’ve done worse to go against the law,” Lucifer reminds him, eyes dropping up and down Sam’s body, small smirk on his face and Sam rolls his eyes, but he’s laughing too.

“Yeah,” he says, “okay.”

Lucifer smiles. It’s genuine and that surprises Sam for some reason, like maybe someone from the Center couldn’t be capable of the same emotions as those from the factions.

“Why?” he asks, when Lucifer’s turned away and started out in the direction of the casino.

He pauses, whole back going stiff and Sam thinks maybe somehow he’s said the wrong thing, but then Lucifer’s turning, looking over his shoulder. “Why what?”

Sam takes a step forward. Watches Lucifer watching him, wary-eyed and tense, and thinks, _Jesus god not you too_. “What’s your motivation here, why do you want to go against your own family.”

Lucifer hesitates. Then:

“I’m doing this for you, Sam. I thought you knew,” and Sam feels something topple and fall in his chest, blooming bright red heat through his whole body when it lands. 

*

It’s quieter than usual at the casino tonight, quieter still when they realize who Sam has brought with him. Ellen stares at Lucifer, cross between the automatic reverence and absolute terror, and when Sam slides his card across the podium for her to scan she doesn’t even snark at him about Ash missing. 

Lucifer stays a step behind Sam when they go in, which is a strange feeling but not entirely unwelcome. Conversations falter and then go into silence as they walk past, and Sam grits his teeth, looking for an empty table. There isn’t one tonight, but it doesn’t take much persuasion before he’s convinced Ruby and Lilith to move their game of gin rummy to Andy and Ansem Gallagher’s table, and then he’s hooking his ankle around the leg of a chair and swinging it out so he can sit down. He drags one next to him out for Lucifer, but even after they’re both seated people keep staring, hands clenching on their thighs like they want to do something but aren’t quite sure how to go about it.

“So this is it,” Lucifer says, and looks around. The air is cloudy and thick with smoke, burnt cigarettes in the ashtray at the center of the table, and Sam calls for a fresh pack. 

“This is it,” Sam says. He grabs the stack of cards off the table, shuffles and shifts through bent jacks and creased fours until he finds two kings—club and spade—and hands one to Lucifer.

He looks it over with a curious expression. 

“Keep that in your pocket until I’ve dealt the hands and we’ve started an actual game,” Sam tells him.

“What’s it for?”

“It’s how I uh. It’s how I win all my games.”

Lucifer smirks, sliding the card into his jacket. “It’s how you cheat,” he clarifies, voice all amusement and faint affection, and pushes his knee into Sam’s under the table. Surprised, Sam pushes back, and has to duck his head because he can’t stop smiling for some reason.

“Shut up,” he admonishes, “no one’s gonna play with us if they overhear you confirming what they already know.” He shuffles the deck, passes four sets of seven cards around the table. Quietly explains the rules of poker to Lucifer as he does so, and watches out of the corner of his eyes as the casino relaxes by degrees, slowly returning to their games and their alcohol and their cigarettes. 

The bartender returns with a fresh pack of cigarettes for Sam and Lucifer, but it’s another ten minutes before anyone will approach their table to play—Jake Talley and a woman Sam thinks might be his fiancée. Ava-something, with her mouth pursed in disapproval as she glares at Lucifer, sitting across from him and lifting her stack.

“He’s playing?” Jake asks after a while, gesturing at Lucifer. Sam shrugs, open-palmed and wide-eyed, and leans back in his seat, indicating it’s up to them whether they stay or go. Sam doesn’t give a shit.

Jake and Ava look at each other, then Ava reaches into her pocket and pulls out some kind of sour-smelling green fruit, and the game begins. 

*

Lucifer’s hands on the cards are almost enough to distract Sam completely from what he’s trying to accomplish. The intense focused expression in his eyes as he stares down, cigarette in his mouth, deliberately not moving the king the way Sam told him, drawing card after card and trading with Sam until he’s got a full house slapped on the table and Ava and Jake are handing over their fruits and meats and a container of stale rice. No one’s looking at Lucifer now, except as a threat to their rations. 

He glances at Sam once, eyebrows raised— _was that correct?_ —and Sam nods back, _yeah_ , and then they’re moving to the next table. Sam carefully shuffling the deck and slipping two kings out, one for him and once for Lucifer, while Lucifer deflects the attention to himself, talking about the Center in a way that their companions are forced to listen to out of respect for his status. They all want to ask what he’s doing down here, slumming with the lessers in a casino, is he delusional or is he going to arrest them or what, but they can’t and so they play instead.

Sam and Lucifer clean out five tables like that, kings in their decks and thighs brushing under the table, Lucifer’s clever fingers moving over the cards and Sam taking ration after ration after every four of a kind, every straight flush. Afterwards Sam’s shaking from adrenaline, can’t keep the smile off his face and he and Lucifer walk to the door, pockets heavy and fully aware that everyone in the room wants to kill them.

“See you all later,” Sam calls, watching in amusement as Bela Talbot flips him off from the back corner, and then he and Lucifer duck out, the door swinging shut behind them.

They can’t leave yet, it’s still early and Lucifer doesn’t want to risk arriving at the Center while there are still people awake, so they slip back to Sam’s hostel, familiar safe ground that smells faintly of oranges. Lucifer sheds his jacket and pushes Sam into the mattress, pressing their mouths together so slowly that Sam doesn’t even register it’s happening until he feels Lucifer’s fingers against his jaw, rough and insistent. 

“Christ,” Sam whispers, shivering.

“Blasphemy,” Lucifer whispers back, voice low and intimate and laced with faint sarcasm.

“Don’t you start worrying about that now,” Sam says, curling his fingers into Lucifer’s belt loops and pulling him flush. Lucifer grinds down, already half-hard through his jeans, and Sam gasps, tilting his head back, throat bared, pulse racing.

They rut and rock against each other for a while until Lucifer’s entire neck is this lovely red color, and then he decides he’s had enough. Sticks his hand down Sam’s open fly, under the waistline of his shorts, and brings him off like that, mouth stuck to the side of his neck and hips snapping forward against his thigh. Sam clutches at Lucifer’s back, his hair, toes curling against the sheets. He stares at Lucifer the entire time, feeling ripped open and two seconds from falling. 

*

“What are we gonna do,” Sam asks later, when they’re slipping boots on and splitting rations between them, “if we get caught?”

Something brief and tight flashes in Lucifer’s expression, an indication that he’s thought about this and really doesn’t want to again. “Let me do the talking,” he says. “I’m taking you in for being out past curfew. I caught you at a casino. Something along those lines. You won’t say anything.”

Sam nods, kind of wishing he hadn’t brought it up because now Lucifer’s tense all over, his movements going sharp and erratic and it occurs to Sam that Lucifer is nervous as hell about this. He puts his hand on Lucifer’s shoulder and Lucifer jerks, getting out from under Sam’s touch like it’s the first time again, tightening his laces and standing up. He shoves his hands in his pockets, stares out the hostel window. 

Sam walks up behind him, close enough to touch but he doesn’t. “Luce.”

Lucifer breathes out shakily. “Sam,” he says. Only word out of his mouth, like he’s grounding himself on the name.

“It’s gonna work,” Sam tells him.

Lucifer doesn’t say anything for a while. Then, slowly, he turns. Pulls a strip of jerky from his pocket and holds it up in front of his face. 

“The first thing we’re going to take care of is getting rid of this shit you call ‘rations’,” he says, dryly, and Sam laughs, soft and affectionate, this unsteady warmth building in his chest that he can’t wholly trust.

*

Astonishingly, miraculously, no one hears them.

They walk all night, skirting around the two factions that sit between Sam’s home and the Center. It’s twenty miles and colder every five minutes, but they don’t stop, taking shadows when they can and praying for the smeared dirty shine of moonlight when they can’t. Occasionally Sam rips a bit of jerky off with his teeth, or Lucifer chews on the ends of an artichoke leaf. Neither speak much, except maybe twice an hour:

“Luce,” Sam will say, just checking, and Lucifer will say, “Sam,” voice quiet and rough from disuse.

They get to the Center’s entrance just after dawn, pale sunrise breaking over the horizon as they approach the gates. There’s a guard, but he’s asleep, slumped over the desk with his gun wrapped loose in one hand. Sam looks at Lucifer, question in his eyes and Lucifer shrugs, walking over and pressing a few buttons on a keypad attached to the wall. 

“They don’t expect people to come here from outside,” he says, as the gates slide open noiselessly. “Pride might be a sin, but it’s everyone’s favorite at the Center.” 

Sam checks one more time to make sure the guard is still asleep, and then they’re stepping inside. And then all Sam can do is stare. Because it’s not like anything he’s ever seen before.

The factions are all the same. Miles of dirt and gravel, patches of black ice during the winter and clumps of snow in the summer. People gathered around burning trash cans, rubbing their hands together as the fires leap up into the cold air. Hostels crumbling around the edges, the Market running loud and noisy and dirty from oh-seven hundred to oh-five hundred; and beyond that, the labor farms, the honest people earning honest rations. But the Center—Jesus, Sam’s never—

It’s like something out of a dream, these shining tall buildings and white marble houses. Jet black roads so smooth Sam thinks he could glide over them. Those strange, loud vehicles, not many of them but they’re there, most of them stationary in the streets, gleaming orange in the early-morning sun.

And along every road, beside every house as far as Sam can see, security cameras.

“Jesus,” Sam starts, staring because he can’t take his eyes off it, chilling in a way he can’t define, and Lucifer immediately silences him, waving a hand and walking to another box. This one is bolted against a pole, keypad like the one outside the gate but it’s more complex, more numbers and letters and a larger screen.

“Need to enter the code to disable the security before we can go,” Lucifer mutters, so low Sam has to strain to hear him. “Just stay next to me, okay, don’t—” he gestures out, _don’t go walking off_ , and Sam just stops himself from rolling his eyes. Stands still and quiet, arms tucked in against his sides, running his hand over the rations again and again, and he watches Lucifer’s profile, the concentrated furrow of his brow as he enters in combinations.

He’s a fascinating person—Sam’s never met anyone like him, not in any of the factions he grew up in. There’s a quiet sort of fierceness about him, a barely-concealed rage that simultaneously terrifies Sam and makes him feel protected. Safe. Like Lucifer would do anything for Sam, despite what they are in terms of how the world sees them, in terms of how they see each other. Even that first time they met, when Sam thought he might get murdered on the spot for attempting to leave the faction, even then Sam felt like he and Lucifer were on an equal level. Or at least that they could understand each other with very little difficulty.

Something vague and undefinable occurs to Sam as they stand there, the sunrise slowly growing behind them, and he doesn’t let himself think, doesn’t bother with a verbal filter before he says, hesitant and uncertain, “Luce—”

“Sam.”

“In the future, when we’ve done what we need to and your family’s not part of the government anymore. You said you had people who could help you reestablish a temporary system to get everything right again.”

“My brothers and sisters, yes,” Lucifer says, using the formal honorific of the Center that encompasses all the descendants of those working in the government, not just his biological siblings. “Not Michael, but some—Anna Milton and Castiel Novak, I’m assuming. Perhaps Balthazar, if he would deign to return.”

Sam swallows, feeling frustrated and tense and not understanding why. “What would happen to us, to the people living in factions?”

“You’d get help, you’d get freedom,” Lucifer says. He’s not looking directly at Sam, hunched over the keypad as he pushes in number after number, and Sam’s frustration coalesces at the center of his chest, an overheated red ball that presses and strains until it’s threatened to take over his entire body. He reaches out without thinking, grabs at Lucifer’s arm, and Lucifer startles, turning to Sam first with surprise in his eyes, and then with annoyance.

“Sam, Christ,” he says, doesn’t cross himself but it doesn’t make Sam feel any better. 

“We’re doing this so that people can be equals again, Lucifer,” Sam snarls, keeping his voice low even though he’s pretty sure most of the cameras are disabled by now. “No more factions. No more ‘lesser’ versus ‘greater’. No more Center, no more—”

“ _Sam_ ,” Lucifer says again, insistent and a little befuddled, head tilted in a way that endears Sam to him and then makes him even angrier for it. “We cannot have a country run by no one. It would be worse than what we have now. There needs to be some form of—”

“Yeah, I get that, Lucifer. You aren’t _listening_ to me, I’m saying. I want a part in the government. I want Dean and Amelia and Jo and Bobby—fuck, even Ash, if he’s still alive. I want all of us to get to make some decisions. Have some kind of power.”

Lucifer’s expression does an interesting thing, going from inquisitiveness to sadness to frustration in three seconds flat and Sam can’t figure it out, can’t hear anything over his own sudden realization, what he’s trying to ask Lucifer for without saying it outright: _don’t leave me behind. Don’t forget I exist_. And for a second, he thinks maybe Lucifer sees it. That Lucifer’s eyes are reflecting the same thing right back at Sam, in the thin, tense line of his mouth and the furrow of his brow, but he turns abruptly away, hand back on the keypad. He pushes in a few more numbers, and then there’s a soft beep, and something whirrs and clicks over their heads.

“There,” Lucifer says, without looking at Sam. “It’s done. Security’s down. We need to move before someone wakes up and notices.”

“Lucifer,” Sam says, desperate and terrified, but Lucifer just shakes his head once, quick abortive movement that gets Sam’s breath caught in his throat, and then they’re going, walking down the perfect smooth road towards the perfect shining house in the distance. 

Perfect, and all Sam wants to do is blow it up and let the smoldering ruins rain down onto his shoulders.

*

“All this _food_ ,” Sam says, maybe the millionth time in half an hour, knocking his knee against the underside of the table in an effort to take the salt from the middle. “What do you do with it when it’s—y’know, when you’ve had enough?” 

They’re steadily not talking about the government issue, not inside the Morningstars’ estate. Sam feels it, though; quiet tension radiating off Lucifer’s shoulders and he knows it’s only a matter of time before one or both of them snaps, starts up some kind of violent altercation between them because Sam can’t let go and Lucifer obviously wishes he would.

But it would be a bad idea, they both know, to discuss it in here, where they’re at such high risk for getting caught before they can even carry out any of their plans. Sam was all for starting right away, sneaking straight up to Lucifer’s parents’ room and killing them as they slept, but Lucifer said they should wait, and Sam was too tired and cold to argue. 

So now they’re sitting in the pantry, quiet little room off to the side, tiled floor and plaster ceiling—good, thick plaster that Sam hasn’t seen before, not water stained and crumbling like his walls back home, or cracked like in the casino. Lucifer’s thrown away their rations—making Sam’s heart twist in his chest—and brought out real food: steaming hot plates of steak and potatoes and greens that don’t look like they were stepped on several hundred times first. 

“Put it in here,” Lucifer says. Points to the ice terminal, some kind of huge machine that keeps things cold when you don’t want them. It runs on the same gas and magnetism as the card scanner in the casino, so Sam’s wary of it by default, but fascinated too. The amount of food they store inside it astounds him. And maybe Lucifer understands to a certain degree what Sam’s feeling, because he’s spent so much time in their faction now, but Sam. Sam can’t wrap his head around it, this production and waste, needless amounts of food for those in the Center who have the ability to store it all for months. 

“We need to take some of this to the factions,” Sam says, gesturing at his salt-laden steak and potatoes. “Later. You know.”

“Okay, Sam,” Lucifer acquiesces, voice quiet and curious like the idea hadn’t even occurred to him—which, Sam realizes, it probably hadn’t. 

Even so, even with this excess waste of food in front of them, Sam’s still starving, and he—god, he can’t. Can’t let this kind of opportunity slide, and he’s digging in without remorse, no thought of repentance, fingers loose and sloppy on the seasoned meat, juice sliding off the bones as he brings it to his mouth. There’s a fork and knife by his plate, silver utensils Sam vaguely remembers from when he was very young and lived near the Center with John and Dean, but he doesn’t want to bother when he barely knows how to use them and anyway, it’s just Lucifer watching.

He eats until his stomach—stretched thin and small after almost twenty-five years of scraps and watered down liquids—can’t take anymore, until he feels weighted down and slightly nauseous from all he’s consumed. Sam looks up and Lucifer is looking back at him, head tilted, his plate cleaned off except for the bones and a bit of potato skin. 

“Are you thirsty?” Lucifer asks him, and Sam nods. 

Lucifer stands, hand pressed to his shirt, leaving red marks where the seasoning is spread into the cotton, and walks to the ice terminal. Sam listens to him open it, shift things around for a bit, and then a low, surprised sound escapes from the back of his throat.

“What’d you find, a dead body?” Sam asks, only half-joking because there’s something about this place, the entire Center, that creeps him the fuck out. Probably those security cameras outside, lining all the streets like these people would have anything to hide, God-fearing humans that they are.

“Not exactly,” Lucifer says, and when Sam turns he comes face to face with a beer bottle.

An _actual beer bottle_. 

Sam’s seen beer—real beer, not just that sludge from the casinos—once in his lifetime, when they were still living in Faction 17 with Bobby Singer and his companions. It was a murky gray color then, laying in a half-full bottle and swimming with specks of something no one could identify, and Sam remembers everyone drank some, made horrible faces for a few seconds, and then laughed these full-throated, deep-chested laughs. Like this beer was the best thing they’d ever drank, like they were never going to be so happy again.

This stuff is actually labeled— _Corona_ , in fancy white lettering—and sits a pretty amber color inside the bottle. There’s six bottles total, and Lucifer’s staring down at the other five like he can’t figure out where they’ve come from. 

“I thought alcohol was illegal,” Sam says finally.

“So did I,” Lucifer says, confused note in his voice that makes him sound oddly vulnerable.

“You think it’s your dad’s or Michael’s?” 

Lucifer laughs once, sharp and too fast, and slams the terminal door shut, coming around the table to sit across from Sam again. “Who the hell knows,” he mutters, working another bottle out of the pack and sliding it into Sam’s waiting palm. “Let’s just. Not think about it.” He runs his thumb along the side of the neck for a while, studying it, then tucks the cap carefully against the side of the table and tugs downwards. It comes off with a pop and a trickle of beer falls against the wood.

Sam does the same, his hands shaking for no apparent reason, and then they start drinking.

*

The problem with drinking Corona beer after a lifetime of virtually nothing alcoholic whatsoever is that it gets Sam and Lucifer drunk in under an hour. At some point Lucifer gets up and moves closer to Sam, and now they’re sitting almost flush against each other, Sam pushing his foot against Lucifer’s and nudging their shoulders together just to get Lucifer to look over. His eyes are like ice, grayed-out blue color that burns brighter the more he drinks, and Sam can’t get enough of just staring, light-headed and lazily smiling and not bothering to hide the want on his face.

“So what do you even do around here, do you just get up and go pray all day or what,” he asks, voice loose and sloppy around the drink.

Lucifer shrugs. “You can,” he says, seems to be tolerating it better than Sam, though a low flush has risen up the sides of his neck and onto his cheeks. “My father visits the seminaries, trains his soldiers.” His hand drops from the table, curls into a fist on Sam’s knee. Doesn’t even seem to be aware that he’s doing it, rubbing small circles against the inside of Sam’s thigh.

“You don’t work though,” Sam says, eyebrows drawn together over his nose, watching Lucifer’s hand on his leg. “I mean. I know you guys don’t have jobs, not like everyone else.”

“I guard your faction,” Lucifer points out.

Sam snorts. “Yeah, like twenty percent of the time when you aren’t fucking me.”

Lucifer’s grip tightens on Sam’s leg, just enough pressure to let Sam know it’s deliberate. “I’ve never heard you complain about that before, Sam, would you like me to stop?” Laugh lines around his eyes, even if his mouth isn’t smiling, voice gentle and teasing and Sam isn’t aware of moving until he’s almost fallen out of his chair, gripping at Lucifer’s shoulder for support, mouth close to his ear.

“You stop,” Sam growls, rough and unsteady threat against Lucifer’s skin, “and I’ll kill you.”

“Promises, promises,” Lucifer murmurs, turning his head a quarter to the right, and then they’re kissing, Lucifer’s hand still on Sam’s thigh as his other moves up to find its place in the thick tangle of Sam’s hair, fingers on his scalp, scalding burns into his skin. The inside of his mouth is sticky and sour from the beer, but Sam doesn’t care, licking into the inside of Lucifer’s cheek and feeling him shiver, catching the low sound that comes into their mouths, punched out and sinful in the bright lights of the pantry.

It’s fierce and desperate and possessive, hot and wet when Lucifer fucks his tongue against Sam’s, his hand shifting from thigh to crotch, slow pull up and Sam must be overly aware, the alcohol fucking around with his skin sensitivity because he gasps, hips jerking into Lucifer’s palm. Moves one hand down to rest between Lucifer’s legs, shifting in his seat until he’s facing Lucifer completely, their knees locked together, fingers working to find the zipper of his jeans.

“Sam. Sam,” Lucifer says over and over, insistent, pushing into Sam’s palm when Sam has his hand wrapped around Lucifer and is stroking him through his boxers, not quite able to get his pants the whole way off, the way they’re sitting.

“Lucifer,” Sam says back, barely recognizing his own voice through the buzz of his ears, sucking on Lucifer’s lower lip and biting down until his mouth is wet and swollen, threatening to bruise. Likes the dark red sound of the name, the way it tastes on Lucifer’s hot skin.

They’re both halfway to coming, smell of sex already sharp in the air and mingling with the scent of beer, when the pantry door bursts open and five figures come running in, all carrying guns and yelling about blasphemy and the righteous punishment of death and “get on your _knees_ , lesser, and start praying you’ll be spared the fires of Hell!” 

Sam goes tense so suddenly his muscles ache. He shoves himself away from Lucifer, reaches up and pushes his hair out of his eyes, sweat on his forehead, cheeks flushed. Comes face to face with Michael and his father, Charles Morningstar; an older man Sam doesn’t quite recognize, sneer of disgust and contempt curling his mouth; and—

“Gordon?” is the first thing Sam says, all incredulous disbelief because no, that has to be wrong, Gordon Walker can’t be standing in the middle of the Morningstars’ pantry at oh-eight hundred. 

“The one and only, motherfucker,” Gordon spits out, and then winces as Michael pushes something sharp and metal into his back. “Apologies, Michael.”

“Accepted,” Michael mutters, glaring at Lucifer.

“My brother is here too, Sam,” Gordon says, gesturing with his gun, and Sam looks over to see Victor standing to Charles’ right, wearing the off-white uniform that indicates someone is a soldier of the Center. Forever and eternally sworn into the duty of the Church and the government, until death may part you from your post. Gordon’s wearing it too, and Sam feels his mouth go dry.

“Jesus,” he breathes, not thinking.

“You will _not_ take the name of the Lord in vain in my house!” Charles yells. He doesn’t have a gun, but he grabs at one of the empty beer bottles on the table, swings it towards Sam’s head. Sam ducks, and the glass shatters on the wall behind them. “You defiler, you poisoned _worm_.”

The other man, the sneering one, has been staring at Sam since he walked in, and now a slow clarity comes into his eyes. “He’s a Winchester, Charles,” he says, “he’s Samuel Winchester,” and Charles makes an indistinguishable sound, furious and choked at the back of his throat.

“Seize him!” he snaps, and Gordon and Victor move, faster than Sam would’ve thought possible, grabbing his forearms and shoving him to the floor.

“Told you to go on your knees, Sam,” Gordon hisses into his ear, while Victor pushes his wrists behind his back and snaps handcuffs on. “Would’ve made this all a whole lot easier. Bet you’d go easy enough for him, wouldn’t you.” Gestures with his head at Lucifer, who is still sitting there, stunned expression on his face, and a dull red haze clouds over Sam’s vision.

“Go fuck yourself,” he snarls into Gordon’s ear. Doesn’t take his eyes off Lucifer, not for one second. He can still taste him, mind stuck halfway between terror and fading arousal and he thinks, desperate and aching and unhappy, _I should have **told** him_. 

“Language, Winchester,” Victor says, sounding smug and triumphant, before pressing something hard and unfamiliar against Sam’s injured shoulder, right at the center of all his scar tissue.

There’s a second where all Sam feels is cold metal, and then something buzzes against his skin, smell of lightning in the air, and Sam starts to scream.

*

He wakes up shaking and cold, hands untied now, raw red marks on his wrists. There’s a bone-deep pain his shoulder, and when he tries moving it sings down his spine, into every part of him, so he stops. 

He’s in some kind of prison cell, wet cement floor and mold-covered walls. The ceiling is hidden by dark shadows but if Sam squints he can just make out the shape of a camera tucked into an upper corner. He shudders and closes his eyes again. Tries to swallow and finds that it hurts too much against the dry roughness of his throat. His head is pounding, right at the center of his forehead. _Lucifer_ , he thinks, maybe whispers it, he doesn’t know, thoughts hazy and half-formed and slipping in and out of his control. 

“Got you good, huh, Sam,” says a voice behind him, familiar in a way that makes Sam ache, but he can’t place it, not just yet.

“Yeah,” he says, voice scratchy like he hasn’t been speaking for a few days. “Where am I?”

“Prison. The pit of the government’s housing models,” says his companion, and then barks out a sharp laugh, devoid of humor. “Look at how well they treat us when we visit them. Just what Jesus would’ve wanted,” and suddenly Sam recognizes the voice: that low register, the cadence of his words, the cynical undertone to everything he says—

“Dean,” Sam breathes, shakily, and Dean makes a quiet, almost pleased sound.

“Hey, Sammy,” he says. “Good to see you too.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this took a whole month to write! which it really shouldn't have! but it did, and I apologize, and I hope everyone enjoys it~ 
> 
> also many many eternal thanks to Hil for a few sentences towards the end, thank you so much for your patience dear!

Sam first kissed Lucifer on a Tuesday.

It was almost exactly one month after the incident with Dean’s letter, and Sam still ducked into side alleys and under church doors to escape Michael whenever he saw him coming. He hadn’t seen Lucifer in as long a time, hadn’t had a chance to thank him properly for what he’d done. Risking his post like that for Sam, a man he didn’t really know and could hardly be expected to care about.

But still. Sam wanted to thank him. Even if Lucifer never returned the sentiment and never publically recognized him again. So he waited outside the church one afternoon, long after the service was over, shivering in the afternoon cold, until Lucifer and Michael and their companion from the Center, some stand-in for a priest Sam didn’t know, came out.

All three drew up short at the sight of Sam standing there—usually the lessers went home after Mass, or went gambling, a fact that the guards sometimes ignored on Sundays if they were feeling benevolent—but after a few seconds a slow, private smile curled the edge of Lucifer’s mouth, and he inclined his head, formal gesture that went virtually unnoticed by Michael. 

“Samuel,” he said.

“Sir,” Sam said, because he didn’t want to draw attention to himself.

Michael and the fake priest looked at each other, then at Lucifer. Both were smirking, and Sam felt a twinge of dislike in his stomach. “You want to speak with this lowlife?” the priest asked, and Lucifer shrugged, indicating he didn’t care much one way or the other.

“Careful, brother, it’s a Winchester, might corrupt you,” Michael said, and then he and his companion walked off, laughing.

Once they were gone, Lucifer turned to Sam and lifted his eyebrows. “You wanted something,” he said, strangely soft even though they were the only two people still in the street. 

“Yeah,” Sam said, and then winced—“sorry, yes, I did.”

Lucifer made a sound low in his throat that could have been a laugh. “Go on, then,” he said, amused, and Sam found himself smiling back, halfway against his will even though he wasn’t scared of Lucifer anymore by that point. 

“I uh. I wanted to thank you for—” he started, and then stopped, uncertain. Could he even say it out loud, acknowledging what Lucifer had done to his face? He imagined Lucifer going all still and quiet and cold, the way he had when he was looking at Dean’s letter. Imagined him tightening his jaw, turning away and never speaking to Sam again. 

“Samuel?” Lucifer prompted quietly. He was close; Sam could see the fine texture of his eyelashes and the tiniest smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose, and suddenly all Sam wanted to do was find out what would happen if he reached out and curled his fingers against the soft fabric of Lucifer’s shirt and just—pulled.

So he did.

Initially, nothing happened. Lucifer looked confused—not angry or anything at how tightly Sam was gripping his clothes—just befuddled, staring down at his hand, his head tilted to the side and a slight crease between his eyebrows. Sam tugged once, towards him, and then stopped, fully aware of how ridiculous he looked, pleading expression in his eyes and want all raw and open on his face. He was only half conscious of what exactly it was he wanted, standing there in the afternoon sun with Lucifer half an inch from him and all his muscles tense and running hot.

Then slow-dawning clarity came into Lucifer’s eyes. “Oh,” he said, just that, and Sam was about to say what because he was pretty lost by now, but then Lucifer took a step forward. Curled his hand around the back of Sam’s neck and drew him down, and at the first press of their lips all Sam could think was oh this is it yeah okay yeah this is what I wanted. His hand twisted around in Lucifer’s shirt; fell away entirely so he could reposition it on his waist, spread out and spanning the length from Lucifer’s ribs to his hip. 

They kissed slow, in the uncertain halting way of the inexperienced. Sam knew a little about it, mostly from Dean and from married couples that frequented the casinos, but he’d never done anything himself—it was pretty much against the law to have a physical relationship outside of marriage, and Sam had never met anyone he was willing to go against that law for. Until Lucifer, actually, he’d never felt anything—little hot rushes of desire or aching in his chest, the way Dean described it. But he’d been having dreams ever since their first meeting—short snippets, all hazy and hot and dark-edged, clouded over with the vague sound of Lucifer’s voice—and Sam had been desperate to get rid of the feeling, in a sort of rough-edged, undefined way.

This kissing, this was definitely doing something to dissolve the searing heat inside him.

When they pulled away from each other, Lucifer was staring at Sam, mouth slightly open and red, eyes wide like he couldn’t quite believe that had just happened. “Sam,” he said, first time he’d ever called him by the shortened version of his name, and Sam felt something close tight and hot in his chest. 

“I just,” Sam said, and was surprised at how hoarse his voice sounded. “Just wanted to thank you for what you did the other night. That’s all.”

Lucifer got this indiscernible look on his face, an odd shadowed expression that was gone almost as quickly as it came. “It was my pleasure,” he said, neutrally.

Sam drew in a breath. Couldn’t get the feeling of Lucifer’s lips off his own, the scent of him like dirt and leather and something else uniquely Lucifer. He reached up to touch his mouth, running mostly on automatic because his brain was short-circuiting, and Lucifer watched. Lucifer _watched,_ and Sam didn’t need much more incentive than that.

“We could, again—” he started, unsure, and Lucifer didn’t let him finish before he was cupping Sam’s jaw in his hands and bringing their mouths together again. It was better this time; not that Sam had much to go on, but it was hotter and wetter and they actually parted their lips, Lucifer making quiet sounds into Sam’s throat that he probably wasn’t aware of. Sam reached down and hooked his thumbs in Lucifer’s belt loops, dragging him closer, and this time Lucifer went instantly, his hands warm on Sam’s face, tiny smile against Sam’s skin.

“Okay,” Sam said, when they were done for the second time. He felt a little breathless, a little like he’d just had all the air sucked out from his lungs, and had to grip Lucifer to steady himself.

“Perhaps we should go back to your hostel,” Lucifer said, looking around. 

Sam was suddenly reminded of how dangerous it was, them standing out there kissing in public like Michael wasn’t in the faction too, and he nodded, taking Lucifer by the wrist—hand-holding was another obsolete thing, though it was slightly more common among family members—and leading him back to where he lived. The hostel was dirtier then, because Sam wasn’t in the habit of cleaning for his guest yet, but Lucifer didn’t seem to care. He toed off his boots, one after the other without bothering to untie the laces, then tugged Sam down by his shirt collar, almost hard enough to rip the fabric, and kissed him so hard he broke the skin. 

Not like Sam cared, overheated and restless as he was.

They didn’t do much, that first time, mostly because Sam had no clue what went on in these situations and Lucifer was on some kind of schedule. Sat on Sam’s bed and kissed, sucking on each other’s lips and figuring out that tongue made it better if there wasn’t too much involved. Sam ran his fingers over the hemline of Lucifer’s jacket again and again, the fancy material strange against his skin, and Lucifer allowed it, faint amusement in his eyes as he tipped Sam’s face up to his. 

When Lucifer had to go, he spread his hand on Sam’s knee. Looked down for a second, lower lip caught between his teeth, and then:

“I’d like to meet up again, Sam,” he said, which was about the most unexpected thing Sam had heard all day.

“Really?” Sam asked, wincing at the blatant hopefulness in his voice, and Lucifer nodded.

“I don’t know when it can happen,” he said, sounding apologetic, “because of Michael. But I’d like to.”

“Yeah,” Sam said automatically, his eyes drawn to the faint bruise he’d sucked into Lucifer’s skin, at the junction where his throat met his shoulder. “Yeah, okay.”

Lucifer smiled a little, then got up and walked out.

That was the third time.

*

Sam tries to move, to sit up so he can see his brother. The pain arcs through his shoulder and he gasps, and immediately Dean is kneeling next to him, hand on the back of his neck as he guides him back down into his former position. “Whoa, easy there, Sam,” he says. “Don’t strain yourself, it’s not like there’s much of a sight to look at with me.” A wry chuckle escapes his lips and he moves so that Sam can see his face.

They’ve tortured him too, and Sam supposes he should’ve expected it but it still comes as a shock: Dean’s face all twisted on the right with scar tissue, angry red marks cutting through his eye and part of his lip. “Dean,” he says, the only word he seems capable of producing at the moment even though his brain is clamoring _Lucifer goddammit where the fuck is Lucifer_ at top volume. 

“Eh, it’s not so bad,” Dean says, and rocks back on his heels. Even with the scar bisecting his lip he can still talk normally, can still smile, all charm and ‘see Sam I’m okay’. “More important question is, how are you? Been out for a couple of days there, had to ask three times before they’d agree to bring in fluids for you.”

Sam stares. “A couple of _days?”_ he repeats, incredulous.

Dean nods, looking pained. Shakes his head a couple times, like he wants to get rid of the memory, before breathing out slow and flattening his palms on his knees.

“Got your letter, you know,” he continues. “About wanting to start—” and then he pauses again, glances up and behind him to the security camera. “Anyway, how are you, man,” he finishes after a few seconds, lamely. 

“I could be better,” Sam says, gritting his teeth and lifting his good arm so he can press it against his still-throbbing forehead. “I kind of, um. I might have gotten drunk the last time I was conscious.”

Dean lets out a low whistle, surprised. “Look at you, Sammy,” he teases, grinning, and Sam rolls his eyes. 

“It was just this one time, Dean, wasn’t even that pleasant.” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean mutters, waving a hand, and then he frowns. “Wait a second, where’d you even get alcohol.”

“Ice terminal in the pantry.”

“The fuck’s an ice terminal?”

“It keeps their food cold, man, didn’t you see it?”

Dean shakes his head. “I was a little preoccupied with getting the shit beat outta me outside the gates,” he says, and Sam winces. 

“Sorry about that,” he says.

Dean shoots him a look, one that usually means ‘shut the fuck up’. “Sam,” he starts, exasperation and fondness, but just then there’s a soft clicking sound from overhead, and both of them turn to look as the security camera lens twists itself and extends half an inch outwards.

 _You will report to the Main Room in half an hour. We will come to collect,_ says a sonorous voice from somewhere in the wiring.

“Uh, sorry, who are you?” Dean calls. 

There’s a pause. Then: _we will come to collect,_ the voice repeats, sounding slightly confused, before clicking off.

Dean looks over at Sam, but Sam isn’t looking back. His mind is racing, already far ahead of him, thinking about this main room and what he’s pretty sure will be a meeting, and all that implies. Lucifer, for one thing, more than likely. Sam will be seeing him in thirty, and the thought sends his brain careening wildly out of control, memory of the last time they saw each other—before everything got shot to hell—and all that transpired then. The way Lucifer looked under Sam’s hands, debauched and flushed and fucking wrecked, panting and pushing his hips up in that chair. The unfamiliar taste of beer in his mouth.

Sam doesn’t quite know how he’s going to maintain control of his facial expressions.

“Hey,” Dean says, poking Sam in the knee. “Hey, you still with me here?”

Sam looks up and over and sees Dean staring at him. “Yeah, yeah, no, sorry,” Sam says, and pushes back on his good arm until he’s able to sit up, legs folded underneath him, fingers drumming an insistent pattern on his thigh. 

“What do you think they’re dragging us into this Main Room thing for?” Dean asks, and then grins, loose careless thing that usually means trouble. “Bet they’re gonna tell us we’re getting off as long as we choose wives from their bunch.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Dean.”

“It’s plausible, Sammy.” Dean reaches over and nudges Sam’s leg again, but Sam doesn’t pick up on the idea and eventually he drops it. 

Sam’s thinking, though, thoughts churning through his mind fast enough to kick up sparks. “Dean,” he says, after a few minutes.

“Yeah, Sam.”

“So I kind of met someone. Over this past year.”

Dean’s smile is real and blinding. “Congratulations, Sam,” he says, sounds like he means it.

“It’s not,” Sam says, and then clears his throat, unsure how to go on. “I mean. It’s someone helping with the—” he makes a vague gesture, and Dean nods. “They’re not in prison right now, probably looking for a way to get me out of here—” Sam fucking hopes—“Do you think it would increase our chances of escape and survival if it was someone from the Center?”

Dean raises an eyebrow and leans all the way back, so that both he and Sam are sitting flat on the ground, mirroring each other. “You met someone from here.”

“Yeah.”

To Dean’s credit, he only blinks once, disapproval twisting the edges of his mouth and then it’s gone, replaced by simple ‘I’m real happy for you, man’. “I dunno, Sam,” he says. “Maybe. Depends if she’s good at keeping her mouth shut or not. You gonna ask her if you can apply for marriage here? Because that might get you out, might even get me out too if you want me as a witness, but uh. I wouldn’t mention the whole ulterior motive thing in front of anyone else, you know?”

Sam frowns. “Dude,” he says, interrupting. “I’m not. I don’t want a _wife,_ ” and then he stops, waiting for it to sink in, hoping to god Dean gets what he’s trying to say because there is no way he’s saying this out loud.

His brother’s face goes through an interesting array of emotions in the next five seconds: confusion, then realization, then disgust, then back to confusion again. “Sam, forget it,” he says, and bites down on the inside of his cheek. Hard. 

“He’s a guard in Faction 24,” Sam says, quiet and hesitant, and Dean shakes his head once but Sam can tell he’s listening. “He’s gonna get us out of here, Dean.” Although Sam isn’t quite sure he should be broadcasting so much hope in his voice when he barely believes what he’s saying. 

He remembers what Lucifer said, the afternoon before they left— _I’m doing this for you, Sam,_ like it wasn’t a big deal. But Sam also knows that Lucifer has never felt the same way he does—or the way he’s starting to feel, anyway—and that Lucifer would probably give Sam away like that if it meant he got to keep his life and his position. 

Just because Lucifer wants to go against his family right now doesn’t necessarily mean he still will within the next hour. Nobody’s fault, just the way it is. Loyalties shift, Sam knows that, and it probably shouldn’t dry his throat out as much as it does. 

Dean makes a quiet noise. “Don’t hold out your hope for angels, little brother.”

Sam frowns down at his hands. “He’ll come,” he says, firm and stubborn the way Dean raised him to be, but Dean doesn’t reply.

Ten minutes later, the authorities come to get them, clapping their wrists in front of them wrapped in iron, hard metal sticks poking into their backs as a warning.

*

The Main Room, as it turns out, is more like a collection of smaller rooms that got crammed together into one giant space. There are several tables in the front, and Sam doesn’t have to be close to see who is seated at the biggest one: Victor, Gordon, Michael, Lucifer, Charles, and the gray-haired man from the pantry. They walk forward, metal rods still at their backs. Sam’s shoulder and arm still bother him, every step sending jolts of pain down his spine, but he refuses to let it show on his face. 

At last they come up to the front of the room, where they are unceremoniously forced to sit before the six Center officials. Sam presses his shoulder instinctively against Dean’s, warm comforting presence at his side. Lifts his shackled wrists onto the tabletop and allows himself to look up and at Lucifer.

Lucifer is already watching him, expression tired and wary like he thinks Sam is getting ready to attempt—something. Sam’s not sure what Lucifer could be expecting him to do, isn’t really sure what he’d want to do under these circumstances—well, to Lucifer, anyway—but he doesn’t like the look on Lucifer’s face. It tightens his chest, makes him feel eviscerated and exposed, raw and open before the court. 

Sam lifts an eyebrow, silent question of _is it still on?,_ and Lucifer shakes his head once, barely discernible movement that could mean anything from _never again_ to _not at the moment._

“Samuel and Dean Winchester,” says the gray-haired man, interrupting Sam’s reverie and forcing Lucifer’s eyes away from him. “You have been brought here on counts of attempting a coup, attempting the willful murder of a government official, attempting—”

“Hold on,” Dean says, something close to a smile on his face and Sam flinches because doesn’t Dean know how close they are to being killed? “Who are you, exactly?”

The gray-haired man looks at Charles, then back at Dean. “Zachariah Adler,” he says, in a voice that clearly implies Dean should’ve already known this. “I’m the one who stayed Mr. Morningstar’s hand when he wanted to have your brother killed, boy, so you had better say ‘thank you’ to me now.”

Dean looks at Sam, then back at Zachariah. “Yeah, okay,” he says, “thanks for locking me up after you had your guys beat me half to death, thanks for almost letting Sam get killed because he found your liquor supply—” 

“That’s enough,” Charles interrupts sharply, while something tight and dangerous flashes across Zachariah’s face and Michael makes a surprised sound behind his hand. “You had better show us some respect, Winchester.”

The metal sticks at their backs poke hard into their flesh, and Sam lets out a low hiss without meaning to, feeling the faintest electrical tingle run through his already damaged scar tissue. 

“Can you just get to the point,” he asks, irritated and tired of being in the same room as Lucifer but not being allowed anywhere near him. “If you’re not gonna torture us or slit our throats, we’d like to go back to our moderately less depressing version of home, thanks.”

He means the cell, but he can tell right away that Zachariah and Charles don’t understand. “You aren’t going back to the faction any time soon, boy,” Charles says, and next to him, Gordon is sneering, arms folded across his chest. “We don’t release rebels anymore. We learned that lesson a long time ago with your father,” spitting out the word, like it’s poison, something irreverent and corrosive messing up the walls of the Center.

“Speaking of your father,” Zachariah starts.

“He’s been dead for six years, you shot him in the street, next question,” Dean says, flat and hostile and Sam can see his hands shaking against the table. 

“If you do not stop interrupting us, you’ll go out just like him,” Charles says warningly.

Dean opens his mouth immediately and Sam almost shoves him out of his seat, teeth gritted as he glares at him. “Calm down,” he breathes out, too low for anyone else to hear, and Dean slides his hands off the table, flexing his fingers hard against his legs like it might settle him down.

“As I was saying,” Zachariah continues, “John Winchester was one of our most troublesome cases; we are still working at sucking dry all the outlets he created within the factions. Concerning his little ‘anti-religion’ group—” he pauses to cross himself, and Sam and Dean get poked at with the metal rods again, as if they’ve contributed something new to the group just by sitting there—“we are purging communities daily. The infrastructure is collapsing. You, Samuel and Dean Winchester, have no chance anymore of hiding your information. You may as well speak out now. It would behoove you both to answer any and all questions we will have for you today.”

Sam looks at Lucifer then, can’t help himself, but Lucifer isn’t looking back and Sam suddenly wonders just how much he’s told his family. They have him out here, seated next to Michael like usual, which could mean he’s been forgiven and let back into the grand scheme of the Center, but Sam seriously doubts that. Because there was no mistaking it, what he and Lucifer were doing in the pantry that first morning. Drunk and turned-on and blind with lust for each other. Sam doesn’t know if he should be furious with or scared for Lucifer right now. He kind of wants to punch him but he also kind of really wants to fuck him, and the overwhelming intensity of both emotions at once is crushing, obliterating everything so that for a second all Sam hears is white noise. 

He feels the press of Dean’s hand on his arm, and realizes they’re all waiting for him to speak. He shakes his head, trying to clear it, but even after it’s like all he can see is Lucifer. He’s oblivious to anything or anyone else, and he realizes with a sudden jolt that it’s been like that for a long time now.

“I’m sorry,” he says to the table in general, “could you repeat the question, I didn’t hear it.”

Zachariah makes an exaggeratedly patient noise. “I asked when is the last time you attended a meeting of your father’s group.”

Sam breathes out hard through his nose. “Never, probably,” he says. “I don’t remember.”

“When was the last time you engaged in illegal gambling activities?”

“Last time I was hungry,” Sam mutters, and that elicits a snort from Dean.

“Are you the one who thought up this elaborate plan to try and take over our government?”

Sam flattens his palms against the table. Shrugs. “It’s been a long time coming, Mr. Adler,” he says, and feels fleeting satisfaction at the brief shocked look on his face.

“I have a question for you, Winchester,” Charles says, loud and harsh, and Sam looks at him. He can see Lucifer in Charles’ eyes, the same ice color; in the shape of his jaw and the slight upturn of his nose. It makes Sam’s stomach turn over, and he casts his eyes down instead, staring at his wrists, marked over with slowly yellowing bruises. 

“Go ahead,” he says.

“How long,” Charles asks, “have you been fornicating with my son?”

It’s so unexpected that Sam actually looks up again. Michael is staring from him to Lucifer, eyebrows drawn together in befuddled disgust—as if he wasn’t there in the pantry, Sam thinks, as if he didn’t see everything that happened anyway—and Gordon and Victor are laughing, open and cruel behind their wrists. 

“Sir—” Sam starts.

“Just answer the question, Winchester.”

Sam takes in a breath. Sets his jaw, suddenly so tense he’s shaking with the effort of holding himself together. Glances up at Lucifer and finds him staring right back, still wary and exhausted but now with something close to amusement in the backs of his eyes. Like he’s daring Sam to say something, like he wants Sam to be reckless. 

Sam clears his throat. The scrape of metal against his wrists is rough and tight, he’s cold and his head is still hurting and his shoulder keeps wanting to bend downwards, unnatural and painful angle that has him wincing every time he straightens up again. 

He can tell that the right answer would be to lie. To say that he has no idea what Charles is referring to, that Sam has never had carnal knowledge of anyone and certainly not someone of his own sex. It might not get him and Dean out of prison, but it would certainly cut the meeting’s time in half. Maybe even keep them from death, at least for a few more months. 

But honestly, at this point Sam is just tired. He’s tired of the Center and he’s tired of feigning politeness and respect and he’s tired of their smug, fat faces, which is probably why he isn’t thinking at all when he replies:

“Three months, sir. I’ve been fucking around with your son for three months.” 

There’s a pause. Sam can actually see Victor and Gordon mouthing his words, as if they can’t make sense of them, and then Zachariah makes some kind of indignant offended noise and Charles is suddenly on his feet, righteous anger pouring off his skin. Michael is staring at Sam, just staring, with his eyes narrowed slightly. Dean, for all his disgust and hesitation in the cell earlier, is laughing outright. 

In the far corner, Lucifer bites a smile into the inside of his cheek. Lifts his eyebrows as a slight flush rides across his face, then turns away again.

It’s a small victory. 

“Lucifer,” Charles almost screams, turning away from Sam to face his son. “Is that true?”

Lucifer doesn’t answer his father, just stares at him with the same cold, neutral expression he wears while on post at Faction 24. After a few seconds Charles slams his fist down onto the table. Makes a gesture at Gordon and Victor, who immediately push past Michael and Zachariah to grab Lucifer’s arms and throw him against the table, Victor cuffing his hands together behind his back while Gordon shoves a metal rod against his shoulder. 

“Blasphemers and sinners,” Charles gasps out. “Both of you are going to Hell.” He rolls his eyes upward for a moment, then points a shaking finger at Dean. “ _You_ are going to Hell too, make no mistake of it.”

“Oh, great, thanks for letting me know, I was really starting to feel left out,” Dean says.

“All three of you will be punished,” Zachariah announces.

“Yeah, okay, tell us something we don’t know,” Sam says, distracted by Lucifer’s sharp hisses of pain every time Gordon presses the rod on his skin.

“For Lucifer: removal from his position as guard of Faction Twenty-four,” Zachariah says, ignoring Sam completely. “Change of location to be determined. Samuel and Dean—public torture of some type. Show their faction members what we’re capable of when they disobey us. We will figure it out tonight. The two of you are to now return to your cell and pray that God will forgive your sins should you die tomorrow.”

“I’m pretty sure murder overrides sex,” Sam says, then gasps as the guard behind him shoves the metal rod into his shoulder.

“Take them out,” Zachariah says carelessly, making a hand gesture at the door, and Sam doesn’t even have time to look at Lucifer again before he’s being hauled out of his seat and forced away, Dean a solid presence directly behind him.

They’re just at the door when Sam hears Lucifer scream, actually fucking scream in pain, and something tight and heavy collapses in Sam’s chest, his whole body going rigid as he thinks helplessly, _what have I done._

*

“It’s gonna be okay, Sam,” Dean says, but Sam can tell he’s mostly just trying to comfort him and he doesn’t have time for Dean’s older brother bullshit, pacing the wet floor of their cell with his wrists rubbed raw and sore at his sides.

“It’s not,” Sam says. 

Dean’s quiet for a minute. Then: 

“We’ll go quick, probably. If they end up torturing us to death,” and Sam remembers that Dean’s always had these vague suicidal tendencies, ever since their dad was killed, centered around taking himself out with fire or drowning, and he feels a stab of real fear in his chest. 

Not that Sam doesn’t want to die, too. Not technically. He figures in this world you’d kind of have to be crazy not to have a death wish on some level, that’s just the way things work; everything’s broken and cold and it’s really dark when the sun goes down and not much brighter after dawn. But Sam doesn’t want to go without Lucifer, or at least without seeing Lucifer one more time—because then otherwise all of this will have been pointless, Sam dragging Lucifer down with him for no reason other than that he didn’t want to sneak to the Center alone that night. 

He wants absolution, no matter what Dean says about no hope for angels. He wants to know that Lucifer has forgiven him for completely messing up his life before he dies. 

Sam spreads his hands out flat against the wall of the cell, palms shaking against the rough brick, and he starts praying, honest and open, for the first time in his life.

*

In the morning, Sam wakes first, lying on his right side because his left shoulder burns if he touches it to anything now. Snatches of images keep floating through his mind: the casino, the soft haze that settles over it when there’s a lot of people packed in at once and everyone’s smoking cigarettes. The dirt-encrusted snow that lines the doorway of Sam’s hostel in the mornings, when he’s on his way to the Market to start trading. The sweep and fall of Lucifer’s eyelashes when he’s hovering over Sam in the half-dark, hand between Sam’s legs as he spreads him open, mouth wet on the side of Sam’s neck and no sound in the room but their muffled breathing and Sam’s fingers riding down the length of Lucifer’s spine. 

All things he’s going to miss, once this is over and he’s locked away for all eternity. 

He hears Dean shift in the bed across from him. Opens his mouth to ask if Dean’s awake now too, because Sam kind of wants to talk, but before he can he hears the shuffle of footsteps outside the cell door and he squeezes his eyes shut immediately, not wanting to get called out now, when he’s got at least four hours left to breathe and blink and generally feel alive. 

“Sam,” Lucifer calls softly through the air vent in the door, and Sam almost falls off his bed.

“Lucifer,” he calls back, glancing up at the security camera in the corner of the ceiling. 

“They’ve given me time to speak with you,” Lucifer says, “may I come in?”

Dean’s eyes open in the half-dark and Sam can see confusion flitting across his face. What the hell, he mouths at Sam, who just shrugs, as lost and befuddled as his brother is. “Yeah, sure,” he says, shifting up on the bed and wincing at the sharp pain in his shoulder. 

The door handle shimmies and jerks and there’s a soft series of clicks before it finally opens, revealing Lucifer in his usual getup from the faction: real leather jacket, jeans, soft gray shirt. His cheeks are hollowed out, eyes ringed with dark circles, and Sam wonders how much they’ve been feeding him since he’s been here. 

“Come to let us know how exactly your dad’s planning on torturing us?” Dean says from his corner of the room, and Lucifer huffs, sliding the door shut behind him. 

“Dean Winchester,” he says, without taking his eyes off Sam. “You realize, of course, that if it wasn’t for me, your brother’s letters would never have gotten to Faction seventeen.”

“Oh, really,” Dean says. 

“Dean,” Sam warns.

Lucifer breathes out. “Can you please ask your brother to stop speaking for a few hours?”

“Faction guard or not, I will slit your throat,” Dean warns, and Lucifer laughs once, kind of unhappy and worn down.

“I’m not here to manipulate you in any way,” he says. “I’ve temporarily switched off the power to the camera in here; I’m here to save your lives. Assuming, of course, that you want to be saved.”

“Yeah,” Sam says, before Dean can interrupt with anything else snarky and unreasonable. “Yeah, that’d be great.” He stands up, facing Lucifer, his heart going at ninety miles an hour for some unknown reason. The way Lucifer stands, with his shoulders kind of hunched inward, suggests that he’s in just as much pain from yesterday as Sam is. There’s a long, dark bruise under his left eye, swollen reddish skin where the rod must have struck him, and Sam winces at the sight. Reaches out, wanting to touch it, but curls his fingers into a fist at the last second and pulls back. 

Lucifer’s head tilts an infinitesimal amount, eyes dropping down to Sam’s lips and then back up. “Sam,” he starts, cautious, and then Dean clears his throat.

“Uh,” he says. “Hate to break up the love fest, but you realize we don’t have a lot of time before they come to tear out our intestines or carve out our lungs or whatever the hell they’re planning to do, so if you could just let us know what exactly you’re planning on doing to help us live.” 

Something’s been occurring to Sam since he’s been in this cell with his brother and his whatever-Lucifer-is, a small thought coalescing itself at the back of his mind, and before he can stop himself he says, “Dean, uh. Do you think you could. You know.” He makes a vague gesture at the far corner of the wall, and Dean stares.

“Little cramped in here for privacy, don’t you think, Sammy?” he asks. “What about your fuckmate’s grand plan to save our asses, I’m kind of interested in hearing that right now.”

“Dean,” Sam says, and Dean rolls his eyes, but he goes, if only because privacy’s an illusion in the factions anyway and the only difference in this cell is that there are no doors separating Dean’s side from Sam’s.

“So,” Sam says to Lucifer. Feels like he’s vibrating on both feet, arms folded tight across his chest.

“So,” Lucifer says. His eyes keep dropping down to Sam’s lips, drawn there by that magnetism that runs in the card-slot at the casino, and Sam doesn’t want anything half as bad as he wants to curl his hands in Lucifer’s shirt and pull in, let Lucifer pin him to the wall and drag his hands through his hair, mouthing his name filthy and hot against his skin. 

But they’ve barely got four hours left now, and Sam has to know. 

“Why did Zachariah think this had to do with our dad’s group?”

Lucifer looks like he wasn’t expecting Sam to ask. Like he maybe hadn’t planned this far ahead. “I told them you and Dean were working with the group, when they asked me.”

Sam’s chest goes tight. “They asked. And you told them.”

“Sam, I lied for you. I have never once lied in my life, but my father was demanding answers, and I—”

“Lucifer,” Sam interrupts, waving his hand and ignoring the brief dangerous shadow that crosses Lucifer’s face. “You told them it had to do with the Hunters.” 

“You’re angry,” Lucifer says after a few seconds. It’s not a question, but Lucifer seems confused, like he doesn’t understand, and Sam doesn’t either, not really. He’s angry without any real end in sight, angry just because right now no other emotion seems to fit—he doesn’t want terror, and he doesn’t want sorrow, and he doesn’t want regret and _what if._

“Lucifer, they’re gonna go after every single Hunter in every single faction now, you get that, right,” Sam says. “I mean, this—” he makes an expansive gesture around the cell, then flattens his mouth into a thin line. “We were supposed to kill your family right away and take everything over ourselves without the factions having to suffer. But it’s not. That’s not how it’s going to be now.”

Lucifer draws his eyebrows together. “Sam,” he starts, quiet and uncertain.

“I wanted Jo and Ellen and Ash and all my friends—” bitter crimp of his mouth at the word, and Sam can taste the lie on his tongue—“to be part of the new government. But now all that’s gonna happen is that the factions will get raided and blown up because everyone here is too goddamn impatient to wait—” 

“Would you rather for me to have told them everything that you and I were planning to do, Sam, because I’m not entirely positive as to what you would expect the results of that idea to be—”

“Jesus, Lucifer, _no,_ I’m just—I can’t figure out why the fuck you’d put everyone in danger like that when you know good and damn well what our endgame was supposed to be—”

Lucifer’s expression goes tight and drawn. “It wasn’t on purpose, Sam. You seem to have forgotten that I don’t live in the factions with the rest of you. I don’t think like you or your brother.”

Sam hasn’t forgotten, he could never forget something like that—he and Lucifer aren’t equals, no matter how hard he wishes they were, it’s not something that’s just going to go away with time or patience. But he can’t tamper down the heat rising up in his chest, and he snarls, “It’s like you don’t give a shit about us, Lucifer. Any of us, like you’re just doing this for your own benefit so you can prove to yourself that your dad doesn’t have as strong a hold on you as everyone thinks—”

“Sam,” low curl of warning in the word now, but Sam doesn’t pay attention, just plows on:

“I told you what I wanted, and it was like you didn’t even care. Like you don’t think any of us are capable of doing something in a higher position.”

“I never—”

“—just threw away everyone’s hope of getting out of this shithole because you couldn’t think of a better excuse as to why Charles Morningstar’s son was making out with a rebel lesser from Faction twenty-four at oh-six hundred in the morning—”

“Samuel,” Lucifer says, voice cold and flat and Sam shuts up, suddenly very much aware of where he is, who he’s with. That Lucifer had to ask for permission to come see him and Dean, and that at any second Lucifer could order Sam to be shot for treason. Even if it’s not where Charles and Zachariah wanted his death to occur. “I said what I had to so that you and your brother would be accorded a grace period rather than immediate death. Considering the amount of times in the past that I’ve stuck my neck out for you—”

Sam draws in a sharp breath. “I’m sorry, Lucifer,” he mutters. 

It’s quiet for a few minutes. Then, quietly:

“It’s all right, Sam,” Lucifer says, though he won’t look straight at Sam and Sam can’t help but wonder if he’s feeling even marginally guilty over any of this. 

Sam steps forward, one quick movement and he’s almost flush against Lucifer, his jaw working and full-scale battles playing out in his mind. He reaches out, hand cupping the side of Lucifer’s face, thumb pressing against the burn on his cheek and Lucifer flinches, but it’s involuntary and Sam can tell he doesn’t really mind. 

“I dragged you into this,” Sam says, voice pitched low. Lets out a wry laugh, sharp and dry, and “I kind of hate myself for that,” he adds, dropping his eyes. 

“Don’t,” Lucifer starts, and Sam’s heart speeds up at the proximity of his voice, the warmth of his breath on Sam’s cheek. He’s hyperaware of his hand on Lucifer’s cheek, too big and clumsy and shaking a little where it rests on the rough patch of Lucifer’s stubble. 

His mouth is moving of its own accord in the general direction of Lucifer’s own when Dean calls from his side of the cell, “Okay, Jesus H. Christ, can we talk about the _plan_ already, save all this other crap for later.”

Irritation flashes across Lucifer’s face, and his mouth twists at the corner. Backing away from Sam, he turns and says, “The two of you will need to stage the rebellion moments before your torture begins.”

“Oh, right, because _that’s_ gonna be easy.”

Sam rolls his eyes. “Dean, for fuck’s sake—”

“I have been informed,” Lucifer interrupts, loud and impatient and Sam breathes out, staring at the clenched muscle in Lucifer’s jaw, the tight lines around his eyes, “that you are going to be cut and flogged in front of your faction. They’re going to line you up and slice your skin with knives before flaying you in the street—”

“ _Fuck,”_ says Dean harshly.

Lucifer looks at Sam. “You’ll need to move quickly,” he says. “Neither my father nor Zachariah will be expecting either of you to retaliate at this point, so whatever you decide to do, it will have to be fast and immediate.”

“You didn’t come up with something?” Dean asks. As if he would have actually listened to any of Lucifer’s plans. Sam rolls his eyes, but raises an eyebrow at Lucifer anyway, questioning. 

Lucifer shakes his head _no._ “I believe that you and your brother are capable on that part.” Again, he drops his gaze down to Sam’s lips, doesn’t even seem conscious of doing it, and Sam feels a low curl of heat in his stomach. 

“We’re gonna die,” Dean mutters, with his head in his hands.

“No, just a second,” says Sam, staring at the spot on Lucifer’s neck where his pulse is visible. “I think I might have an idea.”

*

Sam’s barely had time to finish explaining his plan when there’s a sharp knock on the door and “Lucifer,” Michael calls through the air vent, “Father wants to speak to you. It’s time for the Winchesters to begin their walk back to the faction.”

Lucifer looks at Sam, faint panic in the backs of his eyes for a second before he shoves it down, hand coming up to press against Sam’s shoulder. “Just walk,” he says, “act normal, I’ll be there when you arrive.”

Sam nods, biting his lower lip and wishing he had time for more seconds with Lucifer, full long stretches of time with no one but the two of them. But he’s going to die in a few hours—or he is if the plan doesn’t work, anyway—and the time for Lucifer is over.

“Lucifer,” he says, when he’s nearly at the door, and Lucifer pauses, head tilted back slightly to indicate he’s listening. “Just in case.”

“Sam, don’t talk like that,” says Dean automatically, leaning against the far wall of the cell.

“Just in case,” Sam repeats, flicking his eyes over at Dean for a second. “I wanted to thank you.”

Lucifer’s quiet for a while, long enough so that Sam thinks he’s not going to respond, but then: “It’s all right, Sam,” he says. Quiet and remorseful and Sam feels it like a clench in his chest, deep burning ache that’s never going to go away. 

They look at each other for a second, Lucifer’s eyebrows drawn down over the bridge of his nose, chin tucked against his shoulder, and then he’s pushing open the door, walking out.

“You two wait here,” Michael says, gesturing at Sam and Dean and smiling maliciously. “We’ll come to collect you in a few.”

The security camera clicks back on almost immediately after they’ve left, and Sam sinks down onto his bed with a soft groan, burying his face in his hands and messing his hair up, pushing it off his forehead.

“S’gonna be okay, Sam,” Dean says, rough and unsteady, but Sam’s not sure he can believe his brother, here in the soft dark of the Center’s prison.

*

The walk back to Faction 24 is longer than Sam remembers. The air is dusty and sharp with cold and Sam keeps his hands shoved in the ragged cloth of his jacket, wrists shackled again, shoulder aching dull and pervasive. Zachariah, Charles, Michael, and Lucifer have already gone to the faction in their vehicle, leaving Gordon and Victor to lead Sam and Dean on, and Gordon keeps shoving his metal rod into Sam’s back, smirking triumphantly when Sam winces.

“Gonna fuckin’ kill you,” Dean snarls heatedly, seemingly empty threat because of course Gordon and Victor don’t know, and Gordon makes a nasty sound that could have been a laugh under different circumstances.

“You wouldn’t get within ten feet of me, Winchester.”

“Don’t act like you’re any better than us, Walker, I know good and damn well you were just gambling with my brother’s crowd not two months ago.”

“You and your _freak_ of a brother never had a ‘crowd’, and I didn’t gamble with him anyway.” Gordon’s hand goes rough on Sam’s shoulder, thumb squeezing too hard against the scarred flesh and Sam bites back a groan, spike of pain racing down his spine. “Fuckin’ cheat that he is,” Gordon adds, and the look Dean shoots him is murderous.

“Don’t you dare,” he starts.

“He’s a cheat and a liar,” Gordon continues, like Dean never spoke, and, “just ask Jo Harvelle, it’s how he got her brother killed.”

Sam goes still so suddenly that Gordon thuds into him. 

“Clumsy asshole,” he says.

Dean cuts his eyes to his brother. “Sammy?”

Sam swallows. Shuts his eyes against an abrupt blast of frigid air, and “Ash is dead?” he asks. “You. You’re sure?”

“‘Course I’m sure,” Gordon grunts, glancing at Victor. “We got to watch them beat the shit outta him before they sunk a blade into his chest, in front of God an’ everyone. Bled out on the floor of one of their shiny mansions, couldn’t even try to jump up and defend himself, ‘cause you ruined his fuckin’ legs—”

“Was that before or after you decided to join the service of their military?” Sam interrupts. He doesn’t want to hear about it, the way Ash Harvelle was killed. It wasn’t his fault, not really, but guilt comes in anyway, tight in his chest and his breath is coming faster for a second. Ash was a jerk, sure. Doesn’t mean he deserved to die. Not at the Center.

Gordon’s hand comes up from Sam’s shoulder to his neck, grip almost cutting off his airflow entirely. “You keep your goddamn mouth shut,” he snarls. Pokes Sam in the back with that metal rod again, sharp hard pain on his skin, smell of lightning in the air. “Sooner you and your brother are dead, the better.”

Sam looks at Dean, then away again. There’s heat blistering under his skin, thrumming through him, and for no particular reason he finds himself thinking of the Market, and of Ash on the day he came for a new knife. That orange peel he traded in, the one Sam gave Lucifer for scent.

“Let’s move,” Victor says, and the four of them walk on.

*

“We have an audience,” Sam murmurs to Dean. 

“Right,” Dean mutters back, eyes flicking over their faction as he rubs at his wrists, newly released from their metal clasps and rubbed red and raw in the cold. “Because this is gonna do so much for public morale.”

It’s supposed to echo what the Center did to John six years ago, this torture, timed exactly so that most people will be on their usual thirty minute break for rations, between shifts at the Market or on the labor farms or wherever they happen to work. But Sam doesn’t see the point. No one’s going to understand what they’re doing here, why they’re being ripped apart viscerally for their crimes. Sam doesn’t even understand himself, his back tense and braced even though Zachariah and the other Center members are in front of them. It’s just nonsensical punishment, the same sort as it’s always been, and he grits his teeth and casts his eyes up towards the sky.

“Bit late for praying now, isn’t it, Samuel?” Zachariah calls, and Sam jerks his eyes back towards the earth. Finds he’s being scrutinized in a harsh and contemptuous sort of way, and immediately cuts his eyes to the left, where Lucifer stands.

Lucifer’s already watching him, unhappy downward tilt to his mouth, arms folded across his chest. The gun’s in his pocket, heavy hard sag against his jacket and Sam watches it working against gravity, straining at the leather.

Just inside the fence, guarded by two temporaries—Sam thinks he recognizes the hard lined face of Virgil Milton, Anna’s uncle, but he’s not sure if the woman is Hester or Rachel—is a line of faction inhabitants, people Sam’s gambled or traded with before. He sees Amelia and Madison and Jo at the forefront, Jake and his probable fiancée somewhere behind them, Lily and Andy and Ruby all hanging back, staring. 

He nudges at Dean, the most movement he’ll allow himself right now, and Dean lifts a hand to wave, sarcastic little smile on his face. “Hey,” he calls to them, hatred slanting the corners of his eyes.

“Hey, jerk,” Ruby calls back cheerfully.

Jo’s staring right at Sam, and he knows what’s coming but has literally no idea how to prepare himself for it. “Sam,” she says, loud enough so that half the faction goes quiet. 

“We don’t have _time_ for idle chitchat—” Charles starts, glaring, but Zachariah leans in and whispers something, Sam has a pretty good guess what it is because Charles’ expression changes and he makes a motion at Gordon and Victor to step back. 

“Yeah,” Sam says to her.

“My brother,” Jo says. “Where’s Ash?”

In his peripheral vision, Sam sees Dean flinch.

“I didn’t see him,” Sam tells Jo, which is the truth, but it’s not what she was asking and they both know it. Her eyes narrow into slits, posture going defensive like she’s going to try something violent and last minute.

“He’s dead, isn’t he,” she asks, and Sam nods once, figures he owes her that much even if he can’t look directly at her now. 

“You absolute fucking _bastard_ —” she starts, voice full of venom and absolutely devastating in the intensity of her anger, but before she can get any further Virgil reaches out. Grips her shoulder in his hand and forces her backwards, snarling some bullshit about watch your language and Sam feels like he’s being throttled.

“Okay, okay, _enough,”_ Charles says.

Zachariah steps forward, alongside Michael and Lucifer, and gestures at Sam and Dean with his hand. “Get it over with,” he says, “there’s a service at oh-five hundred tonight and I’d like to make it there in time.”

Michael jerks his head from Gordon to Sam, from Victor to Dean, and says:

“Take care of it,” with a thoughtless expression on his face. 

“The least you could do,” Dean says, as Victor steps up to him, pressing the blade of his knife into his skin, not quite hard enough to make him bleed, “is smash my head in with a club first. Since, y’know, you’re trying to replicate my dad’s murder.”

“Shut up,” Victor says, “don’t tempt me to kill you before it’s your time,” and he cuts upwards, small trickle of blood flowing from the wound. 

Sam looks up, squinting through the filtered sunlight in the shadow of Gordon’s body, casting about frantically for Lucifer. He’s still standing where he was, hands in his pockets, mild neutral expression on his face as he watches the proceedings, and Sam catches his eye. Nods his head up, infinitesimal movement that no one catches behind the glint of sun off steel. 

Lucifer’s hand wraps around the gun in his pocket, pulls it out and Sam sees Michael’s mouth moving, asking “what in the world, Lucifer—” 

His finger curls around the trigger. “I’m sorry for this, Michael,” he says, and then he spins around and shoots Zachariah in the chest.

There’s a loud shout, an exclamation of disbelief and horror from Charles. Sam watches Michael tackle Lucifer to the ground, trying to wrestle the gun out of his hand while Lucifer pushes at his arm, face twisted into a snarl. Gordon has his gun shoved against Sam’s neck, digging the barrel into his skin hard enough to leave a mark. Twists Sam’s arm up behind his back, hissing:

“You make one move and your brother will have to watch you die long before he gets shot himself,” in a low, dangerous voice. Victor is still standing directly in front of Dean, all threatening position, the gun resting between Dean’s eyes.

“Did you do this?” he yells. “Did you set Lucifer up for this?”

Dean’s lip curls. “Bite me, asshole,” he says.

Michael has Lucifer flat on the ground, digging his knee into his back, gun pressed up to the base of his skull. “Should I shoot him, Father?” he asks over his shoulder, but Charles shakes his head. 

“I think it would be better to let him suffer,” he says, eyes locked onto Sam’s and suddenly there’s an ice cold crawling sensation in Sam’s stomach. “ _Both_ of them,” he adds, and jerks his eyes towards Victor and Dean.

Victor’s hand moves from Dean’s forehead to his stomach, digging the gun in just at Dean’s waist. Sam draws in a breath, struggling against Gordon, who keeps twisting his wrist like he wants to break it, and then—

“Say goodbye to your brother, Winchester,” Victor says, and he buries a bullet in Dean’s skin.

Dean goes down immediately, and Sam directly after, on his knees and screaming. Gordon is still directly behind him with the gun trained on his head but there’s no need for that now, not with Dean dying directly in front of him, his blood mixing with Zachariah’s on the ground. 

“Okay,” he’s saying, barely audible to himself through the rush of white noise in his head, can hardly see through the film of red that’s come over his vision, “okay, I surrender, all right, you do whatever you want with me, _fuck_ —”

“Winchester,” Gordon says behind him, voice a heated warning.

Michael walks over and stands next to Dean’s body, lightly nudging him in the ribs with his toe. “You can’t go against us and expect to win,” he says, sounding vaguely apologetic but Sam knows that’s all for show. He turns to Lucifer, who is still standing with the gun clutched tight in his hand, looking stunned and a little confused, and “Take this one to the healers,” he says, gesturing at Dean. “I think he might still be alive.”

“We can’t have that, can we,” Charles starts, but Michael shakes his head at him, fast authoritative movement. Sam watches Charles back down with a small smirk on his face, and he knows: Michael wants Dean for torture practice later. Heal him up just to let him fall again. 

Sam feels a full-body shudder run through him, watching Lucifer and Victor carefully getting Dean into one of the Center vehicles. Lucifer looks over his shoulder as he slides into the front, eyes catching onto Sam’s for a second, brow pinched tight, but with Michael and Gordon and Charles keeping watch it’s not like he can say anything. 

“I’ll want you in a cell by this evening,” Michael tells his brother as Lucifer prepares the vehicle for departure. “If I come by the Center and you haven’t locked yourself up.”

Lucifer waves a hand, careless. Glances at Sam one more time, then slams the door shut, and Sam watches them leave, his chest feeling two sizes too tight, breath coming sharp and fast like it might crack open his ribs.

“Well,” says Michael, when they’re gone.

“Now you know how it feels,” Jo says to Sam, and he barely even has the strength to look at her before he feels the cold iron clasp of shackles around his sore wrists.

“You gonna die now for sure, motherfucker,” Gordon hisses into his ear. There’s the press of the gun against Sam’s back and he thinks about Lucifer, searing the image of him onto the backs of his eyelids. Not Lucifer worried, the way he was just now, but Lucifer before. When they were still in the faction, and things were—not easier, but. Simpler, maybe. Lucifer sucking bruises onto the insides of Sam’s thighs. Lucifer with his hand wrapped in Sam’s hair, mouth on his jaw. Lucifer guiding Sam’s hand inside of his shorts, telling him what felt good, what didn’t.

Sam takes in a breath. “Yeah, okay,” he says, and braces himself for the blow.

But when he opens his eyes again, Michael is standing over him. Arms folded across his chest, head tilted, honestly curious expression on his face. “Did you honestly think we were going to kill you now, Samuel?” he asks. “With Dean in the care of the healers?”

Sam lifts his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t be surprised, considering,” he says, and Michael makes an abortive laughing sound, dragged up from his throat and spat at Sam’s feet.

“You continue to be insubordinate and disrespectful,” he says, sounding almost amused. “Don’t get me wrong, Samuel, I am—beyond thrilled at the thought of being allowed to murder you eventually. But after you slaughtered my companion—” quick gesture at Zachariah, brief sign of the cross, and Sam bites a smirk into the inside of his cheek—“I feel it is necessary to leave these grounds for a while. They should be cleaned and consecrated before anything else falls here.” His eyes flick over Sam’s head, to where Charles is standing. “Don’t you agree, Father?”

“Absolutely,” Charles says.

“So,” Michael continues, pacing in front of Sam now, “what I’m going to do is this. I’m going to allow you to come back to the Center. We’ll wait and see if your brother will live after his—unfortunate encounter, and then both of you will die.” He smiles, like he’s telling Sam that he’s off the hook now, that he can return to his hostel and receive extra rations for the rest of his life, and Sam feels hate boiling inside of him, thick and viscous. 

“You wouldn’t get your knives past my ribcage before Lucifer would tear your heart out,” he snarls. 

Something dangerous flashes behind Michael’s eyes. “I’ll be taking care of my brother,” he says. “But I’m sure he’d appreciate the disgusting faith you seem to have in him.”

“At least he didn’t betray me right before I was about to kill the sons of a so-called convicted felon,” Sam mutters, and Michael’s back goes stiff, hand tightening around his gun.

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” he says. “For both our sakes, Samuel.” He gestures at one of the two remaining vehicles with his gun, jerking his head to the left at Gordon. “Take him away,” he orders, and Gordon shoves his knee into the small of Sam’s back.

“Let’s go, Winchester,” he says, and Sam stands, slow and exhausted and sore and feeling about a million years old in the frigid dusty wind. 

*

There’s a bruise on Lucifer’s jaw.

Granted, there are bruises scattered across his entire face, but the one on his jaw is scraped and rough, mixture of indigo and ochre, faintly swollen around the edges. Sam’s eyes keep snagging onto it, he finds himself lost for seconds at a time in the coloring of Lucifer’s injuries. 

“Does it honestly look that terrible, Sam?” Lucifer asks, looking sideways at Michael, who is standing directly behind him, as if to remind Sam that they aren’t alone. 

“It’s okay,” he says, lying straight through his teeth, clenching his hands inside his jacket. He’s been in this cell for upwards of three hours, alternating between lying flat on his back and pressing himself up against the wall. Glaring at the security camera in the corner and mouthing _fuck you all_ in a vaguely defiant way, knowing it doesn’t matter now what he does or doesn’t do.

He’s been good as dead from the second they put that bullet into his brother, anyway.

“Don’t think you’ll be allowed to share this cell all evening,” Michael says. He’s staring at Lucifer, mouth curled into a sneer, and Lucifer is steadfastly ignoring him, eyes on Sam. “I’m just giving you a final chance to—” he pauses, upper lip curling in disgust—“say your goodbyes. Before I haul my brother away from you forever.” He looks at Sam, then, and Sam holds himself tense so he won’t flinch. “Give you both one final memory, since it is _your_ fault he’s in here now.”

Sam scoffs quietly, staring down at the ground and tightening his jaw. 

“You act all threatening,” Lucifer says, voice soft and dangerous though he won’t look directly at his brother. “But I think we all know you don’t aim to kill me too.”

“Just wanted you set up in a cell for the evening,” Michael says, with his arms folded across his chest. “When I came by and you were still in that room with the healers—”

Lucifer rolls his eyes. “I was going to have put myself up, Michael.”

Michael waves a hand. “Listen,” he says, gaze shifting between Sam and Lucifer. “There are definite plans for the both of you—for all three of you, if you include your brother Dean.”

Sam feels something give way in his legs, and it’s all he can do not to fall straight back against the makeshift bed. “Dean’s alive?”

Michael’s mouth thins out, Sam supposes he’s annoyed at being interrupted but he doesn’t say anything, just nods once, drumming his fingers against his forearm. “Dean is very—resilient,” he says, stubborn admiration in his voice that Sam thinks he should probably ignore. “He will live, yes. But you will not.”

“I figured.”

“Tomorrow morning. First light. We’re taking you back out to Faction twenty-four, and you will be shot dead in the streets before anyone’s even aware of what’s going on.”

“Sounds fantastic,” Sam mutters, scuffing his foot against the ground and gritting his teeth. He can feel Lucifer’s eyes on him, still, but he doesn’t dare look up. Afraid that if he does, he’ll lose it, and he can’t afford that right now. Can’t be terrified or stricken or any number of other things, even in the face of death. 

He sees vague, half-formed pictures in his mind, of him splayed out in the streets with half his head missing, torn shoulder exposed to the wind, body getting hauled out and cremated the way John was, and he swallows roughly, unsure whether he wants to be sick or if he’s just breaking down.

“I’m sure,” Michael says, wry. “And Lucifer—we’ve discussed already what’s going to happen with you.” Sam hears a muffled clapping sound that he assumes is Michael hitting Lucifer’s shoulder, and then:

“I’m leaving now, I’ll expect this cell to only contain a Winchester the next time I come around,” and the door slides shut with a soft click. 

“Jesus fuck,” Sam says, and slides down the wall. He can feel Lucifer hovering over him, uncertain, and without looking up he holds out his hand. Lucifer takes it, and a second later Sam isn’t the only one on the floor.

They’re both quiet for a few minutes, Sam tracing absent patterns across the back of Lucifer’s hand and Lucifer allowing it, watching Sam’s fingers like they fascinate him. “What’re they doing to you,” Sam asks, when he can’t hold the question back anymore. “Michael said you already talked about it.”

Lucifer nods. Lets out a soft, dark laugh, devoid of humor, and reaching out to catch one of Sam’s hands in his own. “They won’t kill me,” he says. “I’ve been exiled, I’m supposed to go to a monastery and be the guard for its adjoining faction.”

Sam arches an eyebrow.

“It’s penitence,” Lucifer says, mocking someone judging by the tone in his voice. “I touched someone outside the holy state of matrimony and now the only way to redeem myself is by surrounding myself with people holier than I am.”

“I’m sorry,” Sam says quietly, without really knowing why he’s apologizing. 

Lucifer just looks at him for a few minutes. Sam stares right back, watching Lucifer watch him, feeling the terror in his chest growing tighter and tighter, restricting his airflow and catching hard under his ribs. He keeps going back to that same bruise on Lucifer’s jaw, wants to reach out and touch it, put his mouth on it and see if it would taste any different than the rest of Lucifer’s skin, but something’s stopping him and he doesn’t want to find out what. 

“Why are you sorry, Sam?” Lucifer asks eventually.

“For this,” Sam says, gesturing with his free hand at the cell, the camera, himself. “For getting you involved in this.”

Lucifer’s eyebrows draw together in what’s becoming an increasingly familiar gesture. “Sam—”

“I should have never asked you to do any of this,” Sam says. “I mean, yeah, we were fucking, and that was wrong, maybe we shouldn’t have done that either—” he pauses here, coughs a little, watching Lucifer smirk down at the floor and thinking haphazardly about lying being a sin—“but I shouldn’t have. There should never have been a rebellion. I should’ve just kept my mouth shut, worked the Market, let someone else fail at going through with this—”

“Sam,” Lucifer sighs, sounding tired and worn down but Sam ignores him.

“I wanted so bad,” Sam says, quiet admission while he stares down at Lucifer’s hand, which is still tangled around Sam’s, like he’s afraid of losing him if he lets go, “for you to _see_ me. I wanted you to think of me as your equal, not just that lesser you who fucked around with you sometimes so you’d keep your mouth shut about the shit I got into with the casino and the mail. I wasn’t thinking, okay, Luce? I didn’t consider for one second what could happen to you if I forced you to go against your own family for me—”

“Sam,” Lucifer says, third time now, voice sharp and insistent and Sam kind of jerks, dazedly, feeling like he’s being pulled out of an underwater dream. “I _offered,_ I don’t know if you remember that. I specifically offered to join you in this.”

“Yeah, but—”

“So don’t you think that I might actually have wanted for us to succeed in our plans? Maybe I’m just as disappointed as you are that none of it has worked out so far, Sam.”

Sam draws in a breath. Lucifer can’t be saying what he thinks he’s saying. “If I hadn’t suggested it, none of it would’ve occurred to you,” he says. “And you’d still be guarding our faction, and your family wouldn’t hate you, and this whole monastery thing—”

Evidently Lucifer has had enough of Sam talking, because this time when he interrupts he grabs Sam’s shirt collar and pulls him forward, hard enough to rip the fabric and Sam hears the tiny tearing sound and has half a second to think _shit_ before they’re kissing, hard and rough and very much the exact opposite of anything else Sam’s ever known. Lucifer brings one hand up and catches Sam’s jaw, guiding him forward and forcing him to open his mouth a little, and Sam groans involuntarily, feeling Lucifer’s tongue against his, sending these sharp little shockwaves of heat all the way down to the base of his spine.

“I did it for _you,_ Sam,” Lucifer snarls, when they’ve broken apart, his forehead resting against Sam’s, voice shaking just a little, just under the surface. “I rebelled, I fell from my status, I lost my job all because you mean far more to me than any of my family ever has.”

Sam stares, going a little cross-eyed because of their proximity. “You don’t have to—” he starts, something solid and thick snagging at his speech in the back of his throat.

“I gave up my entire life because I wanted you, Sam,” Lucifer says, and his voice is quieter now, though no less insistent. Hands on Sam’s, and he breathes out, warm little gust of air against Sam’s chin. “You cannot possibly doubt how much I love you.”

It’s the first time either of them has ever said it, and it makes Sam’s entire world comes to a screeching halt. For a second it’s like all his main functions have been shut down, like his lungs are trapped in a steel cage, suffocating him and he can hardly breathe or think or see but for Lucifer, standing in front of him and _shining,_ the way he always has, breathtaking and awe-inspiring even with the bruises and cuts scattered in constellations across his face. 

“God,” Sam says through gritted teeth, when his mind is working again on some level, “do you have any idea—do you even _know_ how long I—” but it’s too painful to try and get the words out and they’ve wasted too much time talking already, so he just kisses him, hand coming up across the side of Lucifer’s face and into his hair.

Lucifer lets out a shaky, almost pained sound, his hand sliding between them to latch onto Sam’s belt loops, dragging him closer until they’re almost in each other’s laps. Sam drags his fingers rough and fast through Lucifer’s hair, sucking on his lower lip. 

“Whatever happens,” Lucifer says, his voice half muffled against Sam’s skin. “Whatever comes next, you should know that I don’t regret any of it.”

Sam exhales, pushing Lucifer back enough so he can start to undo the snaps on his pants. His hand finds its way inside as the skin of Lucifer’s mouth finally breaks, metallic taste of blood catching on Sam’s tongue as Lucifer pushes up into his hand.

“Ruined for anyone else forever,” Lucifer says, soft rough wrecked voice, a little choked and just on this side of lost, and Sam lets him suck a bruise into his neck, focusing on the pain until he forgets he’s already half-dead. 

*

It’s really quiet after, like Lucifer doesn’t want to spoil the air by talking, and Sam’s pretty much inclined to agree with him, lying flat on his back, shirt rucked up around his hips, thumb hooked halfway down his still-open fly. Neither of them are looking at each other. Sam’s okay with that too. He doesn’t really want to know what he’d do right now if he saw whatever expression is on Lucifer’s face.

There’s a resonating knock on the cell door and Michael calls, “Winchester, you alone in there?” and when Sam doesn’t answer right away, the air vent opens up and Michael’s face appears for a brief instant. 

“You have two minutes, Lucifer, come on,” Michael says, sounding exasperated and tired. 

Lucifer sits up, runs his hand through his hair. Looks fucked-out, dismantled in some fundamental way, as if Sam has undone him, torn him apart. “Sam,” he murmurs, like it’s the only thing worth saying anymore.

“Lucifer,” Sam says, and pulls him in by his sweat-stained collar. Kisses him, fierce and too hard under the weak overhead lights. 

Lucifer gets up. Straightens the hem of his shirt and pulls his jeans up from where they were resting halfway down his thighs. It reminds Sam vaguely of the hostel, lazy afternoons they had less than a month ago, and he blinks, suddenly very aware of just how much has changed, and in so short a time. 

Sam wants to ask if there are any plans after this. If Lucifer has come up with some way to prevent any of the inevitable horrors from happening to either of them, but he doesn’t. He can’t, not now, with Michael presumably waiting directly outside. He stands instead, reaches out to grip Lucifer’s wrist. Lets his emotions show raw and open on his face, so that Lucifer will know, at least partially, before they never see each other again. 

Lucifer reaches up with his free hand, pressing it flat against Sam’s cheek. Tilts their foreheads together and doesn’t say anything, just breathes quietly and Sam holds on as long as he can, tight and drawing strength from the solid feel of Lucifer’s skin under his own. 

Then he’s turning away, walking towards the door. Every step he takes, Sam feels in his own chest, that restless sensation tightening and pulling until he thinks he’ll go insane from it. He holds his hand out in Lucifer’s direction, abortive movement that Lucifer doesn’t see because he won’t turn around, and then the door is opening and shutting and Lucifer is gone.

Sam sinks down onto the bed by the wall, head in his hands, and starts counting down the hours he has left to live.

*

Sam’s half-asleep and the sky’s shifting into that vague area between night and dawn, gray and kind of watered-down, when the cell door opens again with a soft click and “Sam,” Lucifer whispers, one hand on Sam’s shoulder. “Come on, we’re leaving now.”

Sam blinks and clears his throat, head muzzy and wrapped in cotton. “Um,” he says, trying for coherency.

Lucifer wraps his arm around Sam’s back, hauling him into a sitting position before his hand slides briefly into Sam’s hair. “I got food from the pantry,” he says. Mouth moving softly against Sam’s neck, kind of distracting him and keeping him halfway in that warm sleepy place. “Michael is currently in seclusion and won’t be out again for several hours. We have to move, if we’re going to go.”

“What,” Sam says, struggling to wake up, and then, “Yeah,” coming awake enough now to blink at Lucifer, a vague dark shape in the filtered light of the cell. “Yeah, okay.” He stands up, stretches. Hears his spine crack and winces a little, tugs his sleeves down his arms from where they got pushed up during the night. Feeling the blood beat loud and fast in his veins as his awareness of their situation trickles in. There’s a chill in the air, deep-set and curling around Sam’s bones, and he shivers against it, feeling Lucifer get up behind him, firm and steady presence at his shoulder. 

“Except, Lucifer,” he says to the ground, listening to the stolen food in Lucifer’s pockets shifting around. 

“Sam?”

“What are we gonna do if someone does catch us?” He’s not asking how Lucifer got here. How he could have gotten out of his cell, why Michael would have gone to pray when he was supposed to be keeping watch over his brother. He isn’t going to ask those questions because this can’t be real, it must be some kind of dream. They weren’t supposed to see each other ever again after last night and Sam’s luck doesn’t work out ever, not even in special cases. 

“They won’t,” Lucifer says. 

Sam shifts enough to look at Lucifer again. He’s looking at the security camera in the corner of the ceiling, and his features are tight. There’s tension radiating off him and Sam can see it in every line of his face, how hard he’s trying to hold it all back. “Come on, Sam,” holding out one hand with his fingers crooked backwards, stepping towards the cell door. 

Sam’s still mostly halfway awake. He’s cold and there’s a tiny bit of dirt under his fingernail, dried blood on a cut that’s scraped across his knuckles from some time yesterday. His shoulder hurts—he suspects it’s going to ache like this for the rest of his life—and he doesn’t think he’s ever going to see Dean again. Knife-sharp agony and guilt flaring deep inside his chest, and the thought almost makes him pull back. But Lucifer’s eyes are blue and unnervingly bright in the gloom, a beacon of salvation calling him home.

He reaches forward, fingers trembling slightly, restless sensation starting up in his chest and knocking him with the slightest push of adrenaline, and lets Lucifer lead him out.

*

“Sam,” Lucifer says much later, when they’re farther away from the Center and Faction 24 than either of them have ever been. 

“Yeah,” Sam says.

They’re sitting cross-legged next to each other, pressed close for warmth, chewing slow on strips of fat-covered meat Lucifer salted down and stole. Occasionally Sam lets himself scrape a match against the rough edge of his shoe, tiny flame leaping up into the sky for a few seconds before it burns out in the wind. Just so he can have some kind of reassurance that he hasn’t gone blind in the heavy, thick darkness.

“I don’t know where we’re going,” Lucifer admits, quiet and close to Sam’s ear.

“Neither do I, Luce, it’s okay,” and Sam reaches over and carefully squeezes Lucifer’s thigh. His muscles are tight under Sam’s hand, jittery and Sam can’t tell if it’s all from the cold or not. 

“I don’t regret this either,” Sam tells him, looking at Lucifer’s blurred profile in the grimy blue light of the moon.

Lucifer shakes his head. “I didn’t think you would,” he says, and, “I want to apologize for our plan falling through. I know how badly you wanted—”

Sam shakes his head, once and too hard, making his vision dim for a second. “Don’t,” he says, catching Lucifer’s jaw in his hand and pulling him forward. He tastes clean, a little bit crisp like the flames Sam’s been lighting, and faintly salty. 

They both know this isn’t going to last. Soon, they’ll need to run. From Michael and his soldiers, from the claws of the faction. The adrenaline rush of survival is going to harden their edges, and these moments of stolen softness will be their sole armor against desperation and fear. 

Lucifer’s hands slide around Sam’s waist, protective movement like he can hear Sam’s thoughts, and Sam’s hand curls tighter around his jaw. 

He tastes like Sam’s. He tastes like home. 

After a long while, Lucifer murmurs, “It’s nice here,” with his hand pressed against Sam’s own.

“Yeah,” Sam says, blinking up at the smudged sky. “Yeah, it is.”


End file.
